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Isaac fire, 22 October 2018 Livingstone, Isaac

Out · last detection 29 Oct 2018, 04:05 UTC

The fire started on 22 October 2018 in Isaac, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,470 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1081th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 570 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Isaac · 2019Isaac · 2025

Burnt area
7,470ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
22 Oct 2018 – 29 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
22 Oct
2018
Heat detections
273
in a single hotspot: 80 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
304MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Oct29 Oct
29 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

22 Oct 2018 · 67 MW · 6 23 Oct 2018 · 516 MW · 25 24 Oct 2018 · 433 MW · 54 25 Oct 2018 · 255 MW · 50 26 Oct 2018 · 534 MW · 47 27 Oct 2018 · 211 MW · 30 28 Oct 2018 · 220 MW · 32 29 Oct 2018 · 197 MW · 29
22 Oct 24 Oct 26 Oct 28 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

35°high
50km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 4.7% of the area of London (75 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. Livingstone
    5,198 ha reached on 23 Oct
    0.4 %
  2. Isaac where it started
    2,311 ha reached on 22 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.

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)
22 Oct 31.0 °C 39 % 40 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 16
23 Oct 31.1 °C 41 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 17
24 Oct 33.2 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
25 Oct 32.3 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
26 Oct 34.5 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
27 Oct 35.3 °C 30 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Oct 33.1 °C 38 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 Oct 31.9 °C 46 % 49 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 18
30 Oct after 29.3 °C 53 % 42 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 13
31 Oct after 27.3 °C 66 % 37 km/h 16.8 mm Very low 1
1 Nov after 28.9 °C 56 % 42 km/h 1.7 mm Very low 4
2 Nov after 29.3 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
3 Nov after 30.5 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
4 Nov after 31.6 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
5 Nov after 32.2 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
6 Nov after 31.8 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
7 Nov after 31.3 °C 42 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
8 Nov after 32.9 °C 23 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
9 Nov after 30.8 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Nov after 31.3 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Nov after 31.9 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
12 Nov after 32.0 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Nov after 32.1 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Nov after 30.9 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Oct 2018
After · 5 Nov 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 · 273Every 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 Isaac fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 October 2018 and 29 October 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 7,470 hectares (74.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Livingstone (5,198 ha, 0.4 %); Isaac (2,311 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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. 273 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.

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.