How long did the Douglas fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 October 2021 and 31 October 2021: 22 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 7,566 hectares (75.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Douglas (6,726 ha, 2.8 %); Cook (886 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 61 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 · 2021-10-10 → 2021-10-31

Douglas fire, October 2021 Douglas, Cook

Out · last detection 31 Oct 2021, 04:20 UTC

The fire started on 10 October 2021 in Douglas, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,566 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1066th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 251 in Australia in 2021, of 460.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2017 Cook · 2023 Mareeba · 2017 Mareeba · 2024

Burnt area: 7,566ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 10 Oct 2021 – 31 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 10 Oct; 2021
Heat detections: 425; in a single hotspot: 85 MW
Danger at start: 32; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 146MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Oct31 Oct

Play back 31 Oct 2021

How it evolved, day by day

10 Oct 13 Oct 17 Oct 19 Oct 20 Oct 24 Oct 27 Oct 30 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

38°high

61km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.4 mm on 12 Nov.

This area had burned before

12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5 ha in 2016, 613 ha in 2017, 246 ha in 2019, 155 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 916 ha that had burned before.

613 ha Cook fire, October 2017 16,537 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.8% of the area of London (76 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

Douglas where it started

6,726 ha reached on 5 Oct

2.8 %
Cook

886 ha reached on 19 Oct

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 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)
5 Oct	35.2 °C	33 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
6 Oct	32.9 °C	35 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
7 Oct	32.3 °C	40 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
8 Oct	32.1 °C	37 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
9 Oct	31.1 °C	43 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
10 Oct	31.4 °C	40 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
11 Oct	32.4 °C	38 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
12 Oct	34.3 °C	35 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
13 Oct	34.9 °C	36 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	High 28
14 Oct	34.3 °C	38 %	33 km/h	0.2 mm	High 28
15 Oct	33.3 °C	42 %	31 km/h	4.3 mm	Low 7
16 Oct	34.2 °C	40 %	34 km/h	3.7 mm	Low 7
17 Oct	35.0 °C	38 %	28 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 17
18 Oct	33.2 °C	43 %	35 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 20
19 Oct	34.9 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
20 Oct	37.5 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
21 Oct	35.4 °C	34 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Oct	33.3 °C	51 %	38 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 16
23 Oct	32.4 °C	41 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
24 Oct	31.6 °C	41 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
25 Oct	32.3 °C	39 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
26 Oct	32.7 °C	39 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
27 Oct	32.5 °C	43 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
28 Oct	32.3 °C	40 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
29 Oct	33.4 °C	39 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
30 Oct	33.4 °C	42 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
31 Oct	34.3 °C	39 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
1 Nov after	31.7 °C	58 %	53 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 18
2 Nov after	32.0 °C	50 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
3 Nov after	31.5 °C	47 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
4 Nov after	29.9 °C	50 %	61 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
5 Nov after	31.4 °C	44 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
6 Nov after	31.9 °C	48 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
7 Nov after	33.1 °C	46 %	41 km/h	0.1 mm	High 25
8 Nov after	32.8 °C	54 %	35 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 20
9 Nov after	32.5 °C	57 %	36 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 18
10 Nov after	32.5 °C	51 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
11 Nov after	33.3 °C	48 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
12 Nov after	36.5 °C	40 %	30 km/h	5.4 mm	Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Oct 2021

After · 7 Nov 2021

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 · 425Every 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 Douglas fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 October 2021 and 31 October 2021: 22 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 7,566 hectares (75.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Douglas (6,726 ha, 2.8 %); Cook (886 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 61 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

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.

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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.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 425 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