How long did the Cook fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 August 2019 and 2 September 2019: 18 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 11,217 hectares (112.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cook (11,309 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 29.1 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.

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 · 2019-08-16 → 2019-09-02

Cook fire, 16 August 2019 Cook

Out · last detection 3 Sept 2019, 04:14 UTC

The fire started on 16 August 2019 in Cook, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,217 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 664th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 342 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2016 Cook · 2025 Cook · 2019 Cook · 2021

Burnt area: 11,217ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 16 Aug 2019 – 2 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 16 Aug; 2019
Heat detections: 409; in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 107MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Aug2 Sept

Play back 3 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

16 Aug 19 Aug 22 Aug 23 Aug 25 Aug 28 Aug 31 Aug 3 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

29°high

49km/h · peak gust

36%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

61% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,979 ha in 2016.

4,314 ha Cook fire, September 2016 5,557 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.1% of the area of London (112 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

Cook where it started

11,309 ha reached on 16 Aug

0.1 %

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	Danger (FWI)
11 Aug	28.2 °C	36 %	35 km/h	High 29
12 Aug	26.1 °C	51 %	36 km/h	High 27
13 Aug	26.2 °C	55 %	41 km/h	High 25
14 Aug	27.0 °C	56 %	49 km/h	High 30
15 Aug	27.8 °C	54 %	41 km/h	High 25
16 Aug	29.1 °C	56 %	37 km/h	High 25
17 Aug	28.0 °C	56 %	39 km/h	High 26
18 Aug	28.0 °C	56 %	41 km/h	High 27
19 Aug	28.7 °C	49 %	35 km/h	High 25
20 Aug	29.0 °C	37 %	41 km/h	High 33
21 Aug	27.1 °C	51 %	46 km/h	High 31
22 Aug	27.2 °C	42 %	40 km/h	High 29
23 Aug	26.0 °C	41 %	37 km/h	High 29
24 Aug	26.7 °C	43 %	43 km/h	High 30
25 Aug	26.7 °C	52 %	39 km/h	High 27
26 Aug	27.8 °C	50 %	39 km/h	High 29
27 Aug	28.1 °C	49 %	35 km/h	High 27
28 Aug	28.8 °C	42 %	32 km/h	High 28
29 Aug	27.7 °C	49 %	32 km/h	High 26
30 Aug	28.1 °C	52 %	37 km/h	High 28
31 Aug	27.8 °C	48 %	37 km/h	High 29
1 Sept	27.8 °C	48 %	43 km/h	High 31
2 Sept	27.8 °C	43 %	48 km/h	High 33
3 Sept after	27.1 °C	45 %	47 km/h	High 32
4 Sept after	26.6 °C	48 %	42 km/h	High 31
5 Sept after	27.1 °C	45 %	41 km/h	High 30
6 Sept after	27.4 °C	44 %	40 km/h	High 30
7 Sept after	28.4 °C	41 %	31 km/h	High 27
8 Sept after	29.5 °C	37 %	40 km/h	High 32
9 Sept after	28.6 °C	32 %	41 km/h	High 36
10 Sept after	27.9 °C	29 %	41 km/h	Very high 38
11 Sept after	27.8 °C	37 %	50 km/h	Very high 42
12 Sept after	28.1 °C	42 %	50 km/h	Very high 40
13 Sept after	28.4 °C	40 %	44 km/h	Very high 38
14 Sept after	27.8 °C	42 %	48 km/h	Very high 39
15 Sept after	27.1 °C	44 %	51 km/h	High 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 Aug 2019

After · 9 Sept 2019

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 · 409Every 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 Cook fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 August 2019 and 2 September 2019: 18 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 11,217 hectares (112.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cook (11,309 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 29.1 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.
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 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

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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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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. 409 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