Burke fire, August 2024 Burke
The fire started on 15 August 2024 in Burke, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,404 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 486th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 154 in Australia in 2024, of 638.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Burke · 2021Burke · 2020Burke · 2023Burke · 2018
- Burnt area
- 14,404ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 15 Aug 2024 – 23 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 15 Aug
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 444
- in a single hotspot: 62 MW
- Danger at start
- 51
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 340MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 164 ha in 2017, 3,207 ha in 2018, 2,462 ha in 2020, 4,278 ha in 2021, 539 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,647 ha that had burned before.
- 4,118 ha Burke fire, December 2021 12,274 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,543 ha Burke fire, August 2020 7,125 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 282 ha Burke fire, August 2023 231,553 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 149 ha Burke fire, September 2018 7,655 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Burke where it started14,454 ha reached on 12 Aug0.4 %
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.
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 Aug | 30.4 °C | 19 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 12 Aug | 30.0 °C | 26 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 13 Aug | 30.1 °C | 19 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 14 Aug | 30.4 °C | 20 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 15 Aug | 31.8 °C | 15 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 16 Aug | 32.5 °C | 15 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 17 Aug | 33.4 °C | 13 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 18 Aug | 32.6 °C | 14 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 19 Aug | 33.7 °C | 12 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 20 Aug | 34.4 °C | 20 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 21 Aug | 34.5 °C | 26 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 22 Aug | 33.3 °C | 31 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 23 Aug | 34.7 °C | 21 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 24 Aug after | 34.3 °C | 30 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 25 Aug after | 34.1 °C | 30 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 26 Aug after | 36.1 °C | 16 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 27 Aug after | 33.6 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 28 Aug after | 34.1 °C | 22 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 29 Aug after | 34.7 °C | 20 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 30 Aug after | 35.3 °C | 25 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 31 Aug after | 35.9 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 1 Sept after | 35.8 °C | 26 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 2 Sept after | 38.0 °C | 20 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 3 Sept after | 36.7 °C | 10 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 81 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 21 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 444Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 231,553 haBurke22 August 2023 · 53 days · 15 km away
- 78,404 haBurke20 July 2026 · 43 days · 16 km away
- 17,964 haBurke21 September 2025 · 7 days · 19 km away
- 16,530 haBurke28 October 2022 · 12 days · 32 km away
- 36,579 haDoomadgeeJuly 2026 · 15 days · 38 km away
- 14,407 haBurkeAugust 2026 · 9 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Burke fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 August 2024 and 23 August 2024: 9 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 14,404 hectares (144.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Burke (14,454 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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.
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
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. 444 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.
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.