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Livingstone fire, November 2016 Livingstone

Out · last detection 9 Dec 2016, 04:24 UTC

The fire started on 6 November 2016 in Livingstone, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 34 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,098 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 413th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 83 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Livingstone · 2019Livingstone · 2017Livingstone · 2019Livingstone · 2019

Burnt area
16,098ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
34days
6 Nov 2016 – 9 Dec 2016
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
6 Nov
2016
Heat detections
1,378
in a single hotspot: 148 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
434MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Nov9 Dec
9 Dec 2016

How it evolved, day by day

6 Nov 2016 · 4 MW · 2 7 Nov 2016 · 498 MW · 34 8 Nov 2016 · 15 MW · 7 9 Nov 2016 · 282 MW · 25 10 Nov 2016 · 171 MW · 13 11 Nov 2016 · 2 MW · 2 12 Nov 2016 · 19 MW · 4 15 Nov 2016 · 651 MW · 20 16 Nov 2016 · 141 MW · 27 17 Nov 2016 · 212 MW · 26 18 Nov 2016 · 2 MW · 1 19 Nov 2016 · 211 MW · 23 20 Nov 2016 · 192 MW · 23 21 Nov 2016 · 3 MW · 2 22 Nov 2016 · 94 MW · 19 23 Nov 2016 · 854 MW · 58 24 Nov 2016 · 712 MW · 71 25 Nov 2016 · 442 MW · 56 28 Nov 2016 · 34 MW · 10 29 Nov 2016 · 194 MW · 31 30 Nov 2016 · 710 MW · 53 1 Dec 2016 · 486 MW · 39 2 Dec 2016 · 859 MW · 92 3 Dec 2016 · 1,050 MW · 94 4 Dec 2016 · 1,262 MW · 121 5 Dec 2016 · 580 MW · 74 6 Dec 2016 · 974 MW · 89 7 Dec 2016 · 2,023 MW · 174 8 Dec 2016 · 271 MW · 55 9 Dec 2016 · 80 MW · 10
6 Nov 11 Nov 18 Nov 23 Nov 30 Nov 5 Dec 7 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

35°high
62km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 12.7 mm on 10 Dec.

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 10% of the area of London (161 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 where it started
    16,192 ha reached on 30 Oct
    1.4 %

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 area0.13 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.13 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)
30 Oct 26.7 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
31 Oct 28.8 °C 42 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
1 Nov 30.3 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
2 Nov 26.5 °C 57 % 28 km/h 2.8 mm Very low 3
3 Nov 26.2 °C 45 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
4 Nov 24.1 °C 55 % 24 km/h 2.8 mm Very low 2
5 Nov 28.7 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
6 Nov 32.3 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
7 Nov 31.9 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
8 Nov 29.2 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
9 Nov 29.8 °C 39 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
10 Nov 32.4 °C 45 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
11 Nov 35.3 °C 32 % 34 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 16
12 Nov 32.6 °C 50 % 36 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 14
13 Nov 33.9 °C 34 % 43 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 20
14 Nov 31.5 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Nov 28.3 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Nov 26.4 °C 40 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Nov 26.2 °C 43 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
18 Nov 24.5 °C 53 % 55 km/h 2.0 mm Low 8
19 Nov 26.0 °C 47 % 47 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 14
20 Nov 27.0 °C 46 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
21 Nov 25.1 °C 50 % 53 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 18
22 Nov 26.6 °C 50 % 44 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 13
23 Nov 31.7 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
24 Nov 32.8 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
25 Nov 30.3 °C 47 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 21
26 Nov 27.7 °C 55 % 33 km/h 15.6 mm Very low 1
27 Nov 26.6 °C 50 % 39 km/h 1.1 mm Very low 5
28 Nov 27.0 °C 42 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
29 Nov 28.6 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
30 Nov 30.0 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 16
1 Dec 32.3 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
2 Dec 34.3 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
3 Dec 33.2 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
4 Dec 31.7 °C 43 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
5 Dec 31.4 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
6 Dec 31.0 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
7 Dec 31.3 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
8 Dec 31.4 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
9 Dec 32.8 °C 36 % 39 km/h 4.5 mm Low 6
10 Dec after 26.5 °C 66 % 43 km/h 12.7 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Oct 2016
After · 16 Dec 2016

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 · 1,378Every 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 Livingstone fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 November 2016 and 9 December 2016: 34 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 16,098 hectares (161.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Livingstone (16,192 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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. 1,378 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.