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Burke fire, 7 August 2023 Burke, Mount Isa

Out · last detection 19 Aug 2023, 16:52 UTC

The fire started on 7 August 2023 in Burke, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 28,500 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 190th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 181 in Australia in 2023, of 1237.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Burke · 2018Burke · 2016Burke · 2025Burke · 2026

Burnt area
28,500ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
7 Aug 2023 – 19 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
7 Aug
2023
Heat detections
989
in a single hotspot: 273 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
802MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Aug19 Aug
19 Aug 2023

How it evolved, day by day

7 Aug 2023 · 3 MW · 3 8 Aug 2023 · 1,048 MW · 93 9 Aug 2023 · 1,373 MW · 203 10 Aug 2023 · 4,915 MW · 310 11 Aug 2023 · 1,282 MW · 149 12 Aug 2023 · 211 MW · 53 13 Aug 2023 · 293 MW · 56 14 Aug 2023 · 113 MW · 27 15 Aug 2023 · 285 MW · 29 16 Aug 2023 · 155 MW · 17 17 Aug 2023 · 81 MW · 7 18 Aug 2023 · 580 MW · 29 19 Aug 2023 · 81 MW · 13
7 Aug 9 Aug 10 Aug 11 Aug 13 Aug 15 Aug 17 Aug 19 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
55km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,777 ha in 2016, 1,567 ha in 2017, 10,294 ha in 2018, 97 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 18% of the area of London (285 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
    28,566 ha reached on 7 Aug
    0.7 %
  2. Mount Isa
    103 ha reached on 11 Aug
    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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
7 Aug 28.7 °C 21 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Aug 29.1 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Aug 29.2 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Aug 29.4 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Aug 29.7 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Aug 30.0 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Aug 30.6 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Aug 31.1 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Aug 31.4 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Aug 32.3 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Aug 32.6 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Aug 32.1 °C 24 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
19 Aug 28.2 °C 13 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
20 Aug after 28.5 °C 17 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
21 Aug after 30.0 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Aug after 31.2 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
23 Aug after 31.7 °C 15 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
24 Aug after 31.1 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
25 Aug after 30.4 °C 19 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
26 Aug after 30.9 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
27 Aug after 31.0 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
28 Aug after 30.7 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
29 Aug after 31.3 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Jul 2023
After · 26 Aug 2023

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

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 10 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 98 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 41: 2.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak98 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM10141 µg/m³
Optical depth1.15
678910111213141516171819202122
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 989Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 August 2023 to 19 August 2023 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 August 2023 to 19 August 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 28,500 hectares (285.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Burke (28,566 ha, 0.7 %); Mount Isa (103 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 8 August 2023 → 7 August 2023.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 August 2023 to 19 August 2023. 989 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 2025, 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.