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Burke fire, 9 September 2018 Burke

Out · last detection 15 Sept 2018, 04:32 UTC

The fire started on 9 September 2018 in Burke, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,850 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 521th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 236 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Burke · 2024Burke · 2025Burke · 2018

Burnt area
13,850ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
9 Sept 2018 – 15 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
9 Sept
2018
Heat detections
375
in a single hotspot: 198 MW
Danger at start
70
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
865MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Sept15 Sept
15 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

9 Sept 2018 · 351 MW · 52 10 Sept 2018 · 848 MW · 95 11 Sept 2018 · 2,630 MW · 125 12 Sept 2018 · 78 MW · 10 13 Sept 2018 · 1,193 MW · 88 15 Sept 2018 · 91 MW · 5
9 Sept 10 Sept 11 Sept 12 Sept 13 Sept 15 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

37°high
52km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 408 ha in 2016, 34 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.7% of the area of London (138 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
    13,859 ha reached on 9 Sept
    0.4 %

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 Sept 34.7 °C 8 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
10 Sept 33.6 °C 7 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
11 Sept 34.6 °C 9 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
12 Sept 33.4 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
13 Sept 34.9 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
14 Sept 34.7 °C 21 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
15 Sept 36.9 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
16 Sept after 33.7 °C 12 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
17 Sept after 34.9 °C 8 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
18 Sept after 35.7 °C 5 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
19 Sept after 34.2 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
20 Sept after 34.5 °C 9 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
21 Sept after 35.3 °C 7 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
22 Sept after 35.5 °C 7 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
23 Sept after 33.7 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
24 Sept after 35.1 °C 12 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
25 Sept after 35.2 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Sept 2018
After · 22 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 · 375Every 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 September 2018 and 15 September 2018: 7 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 13,850 hectares (138.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Burke (13,859 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, 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. 375 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.