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East Pilbara fire, December 2018 East Pilbara

Out · last detection 22 Dec 2018, 16:46 UTC

The fire started on 15 December 2018 in East Pilbara, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,790 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1470th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2734 with a page). Number 536 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: East Pilbara · 2025East Pilbara · 2025East Pilbara · 2025

Burnt area
7,790ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
15 Dec 2018 – 22 Dec 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
15 Dec
2018
Heat detections
305
in a single hotspot: 130 MW
Danger at start
74
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
620MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Dec22 Dec
22 Dec 2018

How it evolved, day by day

15 Dec 2018 · 58 MW · 8 16 Dec 2018 · 1,146 MW · 61 17 Dec 2018 · 2,870 MW · 91 18 Dec 2018 · 649 MW · 83 19 Dec 2018 · 128 MW · 27 20 Dec 2018 · 60 MW · 14 21 Dec 2018 · 20 MW · 4 22 Dec 2018 · 30 MW · 17
15 Dec 17 Dec 19 Dec 21 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

43°high
55km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 260 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.9% of the area of London (78 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

  1. East Pilbara where it started
    7,874 ha reached on 15 Dec
    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)
15 Dec 41.8 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
16 Dec 43.4 °C 11 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 84
17 Dec 40.6 °C 9 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
18 Dec 40.5 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
19 Dec 40.1 °C 12 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
20 Dec 40.4 °C 12 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
21 Dec 40.3 °C 15 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
22 Dec 41.7 °C 14 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
23 Dec after 43.7 °C 11 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
24 Dec after 43.3 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
25 Dec after 45.1 °C 5 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
26 Dec after 45.5 °C 5 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 88
27 Dec after 45.1 °C 9 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
28 Dec after 45.3 °C 12 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
29 Dec after 44.5 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
30 Dec after 44.4 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
31 Dec after 44.8 °C 14 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 85
1 Jan after 43.5 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Dec 2018
After · 29 Dec 2018

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 · 305Every 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 East Pilbara fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 December 2018 and 22 December 2018: 8 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 7,790 hectares (77.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered East Pilbara (7,874 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 43.4 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 84, 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

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.

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.

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. 305 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.