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Laverton fire, 13 October 2019 Laverton

Out · last detection 23 Oct 2019, 05:13 UTC

The fire started on 13 October 2019 in Laverton, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,151 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 692th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2731 with a page). Number 282 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Laverton · 2019

Burnt area
13,151ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
13 Oct 2019 – 23 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
13 Oct
2019
Heat detections
651
in a single hotspot: 141 MW
Danger at start
50
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
782MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Oct23 Oct
23 Oct 2019

How it evolved, day by day

13 Oct 2019 · 1,572 MW · 155 14 Oct 2019 · 3,420 MW · 260 15 Oct 2019 · 91 MW · 26 16 Oct 2019 · 222 MW · 45 17 Oct 2019 · 1,657 MW · 107 18 Oct 2019 · 596 MW · 36 19 Oct 2019 · 2 MW · 1 20 Oct 2019 · 29 MW · 5 21 Oct 2019 · 164 MW · 10 23 Oct 2019 · 62 MW · 6
13 Oct 14 Oct 15 Oct 17 Oct 19 Oct 21 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

37°high
71km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 140 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.3% of the area of London (132 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. Laverton where it started
    13,288 ha reached on 13 Oct
    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 Rain Danger (FWI)
13 Oct 30.5 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
14 Oct 34.0 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
15 Oct 26.2 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
16 Oct 24.1 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Oct 28.3 °C 8 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Oct 33.1 °C 8 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
19 Oct 29.8 °C 18 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
20 Oct 35.8 °C 13 % 71 km/h 0.9 mm Extreme 66
21 Oct 37.0 °C 8 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
22 Oct 37.0 °C 7 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Oct 37.3 °C 6 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
24 Oct after 27.4 °C 12 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
25 Oct after 29.3 °C 7 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Oct after 29.2 °C 16 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
27 Oct after 32.2 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
28 Oct after 36.6 °C 6 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
29 Oct after 37.1 °C 7 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
30 Oct after 38.8 °C 7 % 67 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 94
31 Oct after 26.8 °C 10 % 74 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 92
1 Nov after 23.2 °C 16 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
2 Nov after 22.7 °C 18 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Oct 2019
After · 30 Oct 2019

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 · 651Every 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 Laverton fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 October 2019 to 23 October 2019 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 October 2019 to 21 October 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,151 hectares (131.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Laverton (13,288 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 71 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 21 October 2019 → 23 October 2019.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 13 October 2019 to 21 October 2019. 651 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.