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AU · Australia · –

Livingstone fire, 9 September 2019 Livingstone

Out · last detection 17 Oct 2019, 14:58 UTC

The fire started on 9 September 2019 in Livingstone, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 39 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 24,158 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 254th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1749 with a page). Number 131 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Livingstone · 2019Livingstone · 2017Livingstone · 2025Livingstone · 2021

Burnt area
24,158ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
39days
9 Sept 2019 – 17 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
9 Sept
2019
Heat detections
2,083
in a single hotspot: 181 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
514MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Sept17 Oct
17 Oct 2019

How it evolved, day by day

10 Sept 2019 · 2,479 MW · 135 11 Sept 2019 · 904 MW · 83 12 Sept 2019 · 47 MW · 19 13 Sept 2019 · 254 MW · 43 14 Sept 2019 · 148 MW · 44 15 Sept 2019 · 450 MW · 44 16 Sept 2019 · 313 MW · 52 17 Sept 2019 · 307 MW · 83 18 Sept 2019 · 1,137 MW · 55 19 Sept 2019 · 348 MW · 73 20 Sept 2019 · 271 MW · 49 21 Sept 2019 · 352 MW · 61 22 Sept 2019 · 210 MW · 45 23 Sept 2019 · 374 MW · 49 24 Sept 2019 · 1,063 MW · 82 25 Sept 2019 · 617 MW · 97 26 Sept 2019 · 682 MW · 103 27 Sept 2019 · 844 MW · 104 28 Sept 2019 · 801 MW · 107 29 Sept 2019 · 1,730 MW · 103 30 Sept 2019 · 925 MW · 86 1 Oct 2019 · 430 MW · 67 2 Oct 2019 · 534 MW · 38 3 Oct 2019 · 2 MW · 3 4 Oct 2019 · 306 MW · 41 5 Oct 2019 · 496 MW · 64 6 Oct 2019 · 377 MW · 68 7 Oct 2019 · 600 MW · 104 8 Oct 2019 · 423 MW · 76 9 Oct 2019 · 979 MW · 74 10 Oct 2019 · 7 MW · 4 11 Oct 2019 · 11 MW · 2 14 Oct 2019 · 2 MW · 2 15 Oct 2019 · 22 MW · 5 16 Oct 2019 · 15 MW · 9 17 Oct 2019 · 39 MW · 9
10 Sept 18 Sept 26 Sept 4 Oct 14 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

27°high
53km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 38 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 15% of the area of London (242 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
    23,518 ha reached on 10 Sept
    2.0 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area2.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.1 hectares of 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)
9 Sept 24.7 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
10 Sept 20.4 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Sept 21.3 °C 54 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
12 Sept 21.1 °C 63 % 45 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 14
13 Sept 22.4 °C 54 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
14 Sept 23.4 °C 48 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
15 Sept 23.1 °C 56 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
16 Sept 22.5 °C 62 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
17 Sept 23.0 °C 55 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
18 Sept 23.6 °C 59 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
19 Sept 23.6 °C 67 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
20 Sept 23.6 °C 56 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
21 Sept 23.8 °C 62 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
22 Sept 23.9 °C 55 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
23 Sept 24.0 °C 62 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
24 Sept 24.5 °C 60 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
25 Sept 24.0 °C 62 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
26 Sept 23.8 °C 60 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
27 Sept 23.7 °C 59 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
28 Sept 24.2 °C 62 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
29 Sept 25.2 °C 63 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
30 Sept 25.1 °C 66 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
1 Oct 24.7 °C 74 % 41 km/h 4.2 mm Very low 4
2 Oct 22.8 °C 74 % 50 km/h 4.3 mm Very low 2
3 Oct 23.0 °C 62 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
4 Oct 23.3 °C 53 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
5 Oct 24.1 °C 54 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
6 Oct 24.2 °C 60 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
7 Oct 26.2 °C 59 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
8 Oct 26.9 °C 61 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
9 Oct 26.2 °C 53 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
10 Oct 23.4 °C 70 % 47 km/h 1.6 mm Low 8
11 Oct 24.2 °C 63 % 42 km/h 9.1 mm Very low 2
12 Oct 24.1 °C 65 % 39 km/h 23.8 mm Very low 0
13 Oct 24.9 °C 57 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
14 Oct 24.3 °C 62 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
15 Oct 25.2 °C 67 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
16 Oct 25.1 °C 72 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
17 Oct 25.0 °C 73 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm Low 7
18 Oct after 25.8 °C 71 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
19 Oct after 25.4 °C 73 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
20 Oct after 26.3 °C 58 % 29 km/h 0.2 mm Low 8
21 Oct after 25.3 °C 61 % 54 km/h 0.9 mm Low 9
22 Oct after 24.4 °C 59 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
23 Oct after 24.0 °C 54 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
24 Oct after 24.6 °C 52 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
25 Oct after 25.0 °C 50 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
26 Oct after 24.6 °C 56 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
27 Oct after 25.8 °C 61 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Sept 2019
After · 24 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 · 2,083Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 September 2019 to 17 October 2019 (39 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 September 2019 to 10 October 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 24,158 hectares (241.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Livingstone (23,518 ha, 2.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.9 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 10 October 2019 → 17 October 2019.
  2. Start date: 10 September 2019 → 9 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.

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 10 September 2019 to 10 October 2019. 2,083 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.