How long did the Carpentaria fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 September 2018 to 13 October 2018 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 September 2018 to 9 October 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,291 hectares (112.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Carpentaria (11,315 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.8 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, 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.

AU · Australia · 2018-09-29 → 2018-10-13

Carpentaria fire, 29 September 2018 Carpentaria

Out · last detection 13 Oct 2018, 04:07 UTC

The fire started on 29 September 2018 in Carpentaria, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,291 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 654th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1743 with a page). Number 325 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Carpentaria · 2021 Carpentaria · 2026 Carpentaria · 2019 Carpentaria · 2022

Burnt area: 11,291ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 29 Sept 2018 – 13 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 29 Sept; 2018
Heat detections: 338; in a single hotspot: 209 MW
Danger at start: 63; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 371MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Sept13 Oct

Play back 13 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

29 Sept 30 Sept 1 Oct 3 Oct 5 Oct 7 Oct 9 Oct 13 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

39°high

51km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,401 ha in 2016, 1,112 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,360 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.1% of the area of London (113 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

Carpentaria where it started

11,315 ha reached on 29 Sept

0.2 %

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)
29 Sept	36.8 °C	11 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
30 Sept	36.5 °C	12 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
1 Oct	37.0 °C	14 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 71
2 Oct	37.1 °C	14 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 67
3 Oct	35.5 °C	17 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
4 Oct	36.2 °C	15 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
5 Oct	35.0 °C	16 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
6 Oct	37.2 °C	9 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
7 Oct	37.5 °C	17 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
8 Oct	36.8 °C	23 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
9 Oct	37.5 °C	21 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
10 Oct	38.8 °C	20 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
11 Oct	38.1 °C	21 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
12 Oct	38.4 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
13 Oct	37.8 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
14 Oct after	37.2 °C	25 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
15 Oct after	38.7 °C	23 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
16 Oct after	35.8 °C	34 %	32 km/h	0.5 mm	Very high 43
17 Oct after	36.1 °C	29 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
18 Oct after	37.2 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
19 Oct after	37.7 °C	23 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
20 Oct after	37.3 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
21 Oct after	37.3 °C	27 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
22 Oct after	39.3 °C	19 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	Extreme 52
23 Oct after	39.3 °C	15 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Sept 2018

After · 20 Oct 2018

Before After

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 · 338Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Carpentaria fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 September 2018 to 13 October 2018 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 September 2018 to 9 October 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,291 hectares (112.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Carpentaria (11,315 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.8 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 9 October 2018 → 13 October 2018.

RSS Changes to this page

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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.

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What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 29 September 2018 to 9 October 2018. 338 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.

Where it burned