Skip to content
worldfires
en
AU · Australia · →

Fraser Coast fire, August 2017 Fraser Coast

Out · last detection 21 Sept 2017, 03:20 UTC

The fire started on 29 August 2017 in Fraser Coast, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 24,089 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 255th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 77 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Fraser Coast · 2020Fraser Coast · 2020Fraser Coast · 2020Fraser Coast · 2016

Burnt area
24,089ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
29 Aug 2017 – 20 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
29 Aug
2017
Heat detections
1,529
in a single hotspot: 216 MW
Danger at start
14
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
696MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Aug20 Sept
21 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

29 Aug 2017 · 1,630 MW · 270 30 Aug 2017 · 3,427 MW · 323 31 Aug 2017 · 1,566 MW · 143 1 Sept 2017 · 526 MW · 83 2 Sept 2017 · 87 MW · 19 3 Sept 2017 · 1,154 MW · 134 4 Sept 2017 · 1,458 MW · 150 5 Sept 2017 · 1,020 MW · 59 6 Sept 2017 · 1,284 MW · 112 7 Sept 2017 · 856 MW · 86 8 Sept 2017 · 415 MW · 35 9 Sept 2017 · 856 MW · 26 10 Sept 2017 · 179 MW · 17 11 Sept 2017 · 10 MW · 3 13 Sept 2017 · 9 MW · 1 14 Sept 2017 · 4 MW · 4 15 Sept 2017 · 292 MW · 13 16 Sept 2017 · 35 MW · 5 17 Sept 2017 · 128 MW · 15 18 Sept 2017 · 82 MW · 11 19 Sept 2017 · 38 MW · 2 20 Sept 2017 · 948 MW · 15 21 Sept 2017 · 6 MW · 1
29 Aug 30 Aug 2 Sept 6 Sept 10 Sept 15 Sept 19 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

22°high
51km/h · peak gust
38%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 48.7 mm on 2 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 15% of the area of London (241 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. Fraser Coast where it started
    23,991 ha reached on 29 Aug
    3.4 %

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 2015
Built-up area1.8 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.8 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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 Aug 19.9 °C 57 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
30 Aug 20.8 °C 56 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
31 Aug 20.8 °C 52 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
1 Sept 19.7 °C 65 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
2 Sept 20.4 °C 64 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
3 Sept 21.0 °C 61 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
4 Sept 21.4 °C 65 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
5 Sept 21.5 °C 79 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
6 Sept 21.5 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
7 Sept 21.0 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
8 Sept 20.9 °C 41 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
9 Sept 20.6 °C 42 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
10 Sept 20.1 °C 58 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
11 Sept 20.4 °C 62 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
12 Sept 20.9 °C 70 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
13 Sept 21.6 °C 74 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
14 Sept 22.5 °C 39 % 51 km/h 1.2 mm High 24
15 Sept 20.0 °C 40 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
16 Sept 20.3 °C 61 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
17 Sept 20.9 °C 65 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
18 Sept 20.5 °C 66 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
19 Sept 21.0 °C 62 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
20 Sept 21.4 °C 68 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
21 Sept after 21.9 °C 73 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
22 Sept after 22.3 °C 72 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
23 Sept after 21.9 °C 77 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
24 Sept after 21.9 °C 80 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
25 Sept after 22.0 °C 81 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
26 Sept after 22.2 °C 81 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
27 Sept after 22.5 °C 84 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
28 Sept after 22.5 °C 84 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
29 Sept after 23.2 °C 82 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
30 Sept after 23.4 °C 77 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
1 Oct after 22.8 °C 61 % 56 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
2 Oct after 22.0 °C 70 % 62 km/h 48.7 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Aug 2017
After · 27 Sept 2017

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 · 1,529Every 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 Fraser Coast fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 August 2017 and 20 September 2017: 23 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 24,089 hectares (240.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Fraser Coast (23,991 ha, 3.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 22.5 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, 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

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. 1,529 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 2015, 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.