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Burke fire, 4 October 2025 Burke

Out · last detection 8 Oct 2025, 05:00 UTC

The fire started on 4 October 2025 in Burke, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,063 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 380th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 247 in Australia in 2025, of 1124.

Burnt area
17,063ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
4 Oct 2025 – 8 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
4 Oct
2025
Heat detections
371
in a single hotspot: 240 MW
Danger at start
74
Very extreme · FWI index
Energy released
6.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 Oct 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Oct8 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

45678

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
46km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 12 Oct.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 432 ha in 2016, 891 ha in 2017, 6,851 ha in 2018, 358 ha in 2021, 6,137 ha in 2023, 253 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,707 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Burke where it started
    17,166 ha reached on 4 Oct
    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)
4 Oct 37.0 °C 7 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
5 Oct 37.5 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
6 Oct 37.3 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
7 Oct 37.0 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
8 Oct 38.4 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 58
9 Oct after 39.9 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
10 Oct after 38.5 °C 31 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 45
11 Oct after 39.0 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.6 mm Very high 38
12 Oct after 36.8 °C 37 % 27 km/h 1.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Sept 2025
After · 15 Oct 2025

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 5 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 68 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak68 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1070 µg/m³
Optical depth0.51
234567891011
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 · 371Every 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 4 October 2025 and 8 October 2025: 5 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 17,063 hectares (170.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Burke (17,166 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.4 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 74, class Very 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.

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.