How long did the Livingstone fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 September 2019 to 25 September 2019 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 September 2019 to 22 September 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,722 hectares (127.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Livingstone (12,762 ha, 1.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 26.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very 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.

AU · Australia · 2019-09-03 → 2019-09-25

Livingstone fire, 3 September 2019 Livingstone

Out · last detection 25 Sept 2019, 03:59 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2019 in Livingstone, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,722 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 573th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1744 with a page). Number 298 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Livingstone · 2017 Livingstone · 2021 Livingstone · 2021 Livingstone · 2025

Burnt area: 12,722ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 3 Sept 2019 – 25 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 3 Sept; 2019
Heat detections: 671; in a single hotspot: 91 MW
Danger at start: 25; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 194MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept25 Sept

Play back 25 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 7 Sept 9 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept 16 Sept 19 Sept 22 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

27°high

50km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.5 mm on 1 Oct.

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 249 ha in 2016, 10,523 ha in 2017, 29 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,129 ha that had burned before.

8,941 ha Livingstone fire, August 2017 111,933 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 8% of the area of London (127 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

Livingstone where it started

12,762 ha reached on 3 Sept

1.1 %

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)
3 Sept	25.7 °C	20 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
4 Sept	25.8 °C	27 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
5 Sept	26.8 °C	24 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
6 Sept	25.7 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
7 Sept	25.2 °C	29 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
8 Sept	24.8 °C	14 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
9 Sept	24.4 °C	18 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
10 Sept	21.3 °C	17 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
11 Sept	22.0 °C	42 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
12 Sept	21.2 °C	53 %	42 km/h	0.1 mm	High 23
13 Sept	23.0 °C	43 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
14 Sept	23.8 °C	38 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
15 Sept	23.5 °C	48 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
16 Sept	22.7 °C	53 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
17 Sept	22.8 °C	48 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
18 Sept	23.7 °C	53 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
19 Sept	23.7 °C	58 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
20 Sept	23.8 °C	48 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
21 Sept	24.0 °C	52 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
22 Sept	24.3 °C	44 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
23 Sept	24.6 °C	54 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
24 Sept	25.0 °C	51 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
25 Sept	24.3 °C	54 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
26 Sept after	24.2 °C	50 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
27 Sept after	24.2 °C	51 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
28 Sept after	24.7 °C	54 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
29 Sept after	25.3 °C	55 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
30 Sept after	25.1 °C	60 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
1 Oct after	24.8 °C	67 %	43 km/h	3.5 mm	Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 27 Aug 2019

After · 2 Oct 2019

Before After

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 · 671Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Livingstone fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 September 2019 to 25 September 2019 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 September 2019 to 22 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,722 hectares (127.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Livingstone (12,762 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 26.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 22 September 2019 → 25 September 2019.
26 October 2026 Start date: 5 September 2019 → 3 September 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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 5 September 2019 to 22 September 2019. 671 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.

Where it burned