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Burke fire, 11 October 2018 Burke, Roper Gulf

Out · last detection 1 Nov 2018, 16:01 UTC

The fire started on 11 October 2018 in Burke, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 36,354 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 151th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 50 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barkly · 2017Burke · 2024Burke · 2023Burke · 2025

Burnt area
36,354ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
11 Oct 2018 – 2 Nov 2018
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
11 Oct
2018
Heat detections
1,138
in a single hotspot: 159 MW
Danger at start
58
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
712MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Oct2 Nov
1 Nov 2018

How it evolved, day by day

11 Oct 2018 · 253 MW · 41 12 Oct 2018 · 1,603 MW · 148 13 Oct 2018 · 966 MW · 127 14 Oct 2018 · 3,014 MW · 230 15 Oct 2018 · 1,914 MW · 188 17 Oct 2018 · 14 MW · 2 18 Oct 2018 · 86 MW · 20 19 Oct 2018 · 1,182 MW · 33 20 Oct 2018 · 427 MW · 45 21 Oct 2018 · 23 MW · 7 22 Oct 2018 · 397 MW · 15 23 Oct 2018 · 31 MW · 5 24 Oct 2018 · 198 MW · 16 27 Oct 2018 · 844 MW · 53 28 Oct 2018 · 592 MW · 45 29 Oct 2018 · 889 MW · 65 30 Oct 2018 · 500 MW · 46 31 Oct 2018 · 235 MW · 19 1 Nov 2018 · 352 MW · 33
11 Oct 14 Oct 18 Oct 21 Oct 24 Oct 29 Oct 1 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
52km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 3 Nov.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 755 ha in 2016, 908 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 23% of the area of London (364 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
    26,729 ha reached on 11 Oct
    0.7 %
  2. Roper Gulf
    9,830 ha reached on 12 Oct
    0.0 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
11 Oct 36.9 °C 24 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
12 Oct 35.7 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Oct 38.1 °C 15 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
14 Oct 38.1 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
15 Oct 36.3 °C 33 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
16 Oct 34.2 °C 38 % 41 km/h 12.4 mm Low 10
17 Oct 33.9 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
18 Oct 35.8 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Oct 37.8 °C 9 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
20 Oct 36.9 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
21 Oct 36.5 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 46
22 Oct 39.7 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Oct 39.7 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
24 Oct 38.0 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
25 Oct 36.0 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Oct 39.6 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
27 Oct 38.8 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
28 Oct 39.0 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
29 Oct 40.9 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
30 Oct 41.1 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
31 Oct 38.6 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Nov 38.2 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Nov 37.2 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 40
3 Nov after 32.9 °C 50 % 40 km/h 2.7 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Oct 2018
After · 9 Nov 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 · 1,138Every 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 11 October 2018 and 2 November 2018: 23 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 36,354 hectares (363.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Burke (26,729 ha, 0.7 %); Roper Gulf (9,830 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,138 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.