Skip to content
worldfires
en
AU · Australia · →

Burke fire, 2 September 2018 Burke

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2018, 03:54 UTC

The fire started on 2 September 2018 in Burke, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,546 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1069th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 561 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Burke · 2025Burke · 2022

Burnt area
7,546ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
2 Sept 2018 – 16 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
2 Sept
2018
Heat detections
279
in a single hotspot: 42 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
115MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Sept16 Sept
17 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

2 Sept 2018 · 99 MW · 26 3 Sept 2018 · 253 MW · 42 4 Sept 2018 · 147 MW · 23 5 Sept 2018 · 491 MW · 59 6 Sept 2018 · 230 MW · 28 7 Sept 2018 · 51 MW · 15 8 Sept 2018 · 9 MW · 1 9 Sept 2018 · 33 MW · 12 10 Sept 2018 · 162 MW · 20 11 Sept 2018 · 116 MW · 17 12 Sept 2018 · 9 MW · 2 13 Sept 2018 · 17 MW · 3 14 Sept 2018 · 9 MW · 2 15 Sept 2018 · 4 MW · 1 16 Sept 2018 · 153 MW · 22 17 Sept 2018 · 59 MW · 5
2 Sept 5 Sept 8 Sept 11 Sept 14 Sept 17 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
52km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 918 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.8% of the area of London (75 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Burke where it started
    7,553 ha reached on 2 Sept
    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)
2 Sept 31.8 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Sept 29.9 °C 23 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Sept 30.9 °C 16 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
5 Sept 28.8 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 Sept 30.0 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Sept 29.2 °C 49 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Sept 29.6 °C 49 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
9 Sept 31.5 °C 14 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
10 Sept 30.3 °C 14 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
11 Sept 29.3 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 Sept 29.0 °C 50 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
13 Sept 30.8 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
14 Sept 29.5 °C 45 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Sept 30.8 °C 38 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Sept 31.3 °C 17 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
17 Sept after 30.6 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
18 Sept after 30.7 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Sept after 30.7 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Sept after 31.0 °C 19 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
21 Sept after 31.7 °C 13 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
22 Sept after 30.1 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
23 Sept after 28.9 °C 35 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Sept after 29.3 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.8 mm High 36
25 Sept after 29.1 °C 41 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Sept after 29.6 °C 46 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Sept after 30.5 °C 44 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Sept after 29.6 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.3 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Aug 2018
After · 23 Sept 2018

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 · 279Every 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 2 September 2018 and 16 September 2018: 15 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 7,546 hectares (75.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Burke (7,553 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 279 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.