Skip to content
worldfires
AU · Australia · →

Burke fire, 9 October 2016 Burke

Out · last detection 18 Oct 2016, 04:00 UTC

The fire started on 9 October 2016 in Burke, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,651 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1053th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 224 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Burnt area
7,651ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
9 Oct 2016 – 18 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
9 Oct
2016
Heat detections
271
in a single hotspot: 86 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
2.3GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

18 Oct 2016
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Oct18 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

9101112131415161718

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

39°high
57km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Burke where it started
    7,700 ha reached on 9 Oct
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
9 Oct 37.5 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Oct 39.2 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
11 Oct 36.1 °C 10 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
12 Oct 33.1 °C 8 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
13 Oct 33.7 °C 9 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
14 Oct 34.5 °C 7 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
15 Oct 36.4 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
16 Oct 35.8 °C 26 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
17 Oct 33.6 °C 26 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
18 Oct 36.9 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Oct after 37.9 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
20 Oct after 39.6 °C 12 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
21 Oct after 38.4 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.6 mm Extreme 52
22 Oct after 28.9 °C 47 % 56 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 42
23 Oct after 30.2 °C 31 % 47 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 41
24 Oct after 34.2 °C 9 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
25 Oct after 36.3 °C 9 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
26 Oct after 39.0 °C 7 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
27 Oct after 39.7 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
28 Oct after 41.3 °C 13 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 2 Oct 2016
After · 25 Oct 2016

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 271Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Burke fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 October 2016 and 18 October 2016: 10 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,651 hectares (76.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Burke (7,700 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Australia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 000

Satellite cross-check

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 000.

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.