Livingstone fire, May 2023 Livingstone
The fire started on 9 May 2023 in Livingstone, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,988 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1008th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1744 with a page). Number 732 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 7,988ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 2days
- 9 May 2023 – 10 May 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 9 May
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 230
- in a single hotspot: 146 MW
- Danger at start
- 28
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.6GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 67 ha in 2016, 3,743 ha in 2017, 1,944 ha in 2018, 4,077 ha in 2019, 2,308 ha in 2021, 233 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,970 ha that had burned before.
- 3,986 ha Livingstone fire, November 2019 27,044 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,828 ha Livingstone fire, August 2017 111,933 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 106 ha Livingstone fire, September 2017 12,532 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 67 ha Livingstone fire, July 2016 5,471 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 14 ha Livingstone fire, October 2021 5,406 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2 ha Livingstone fire, October 2021 22,799 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started8,025 ha reached on 9 May0.7 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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 May | 21.3 °C | 22 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 10 May | 24.6 °C | 34 % | 42 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 27 |
| 11 May after | 24.1 °C | 69 % | 46 km/h | 4.2 mm | Very low 3 |
| 12 May after | 25.8 °C | 55 % | 50 km/h | 0.5 mm | Low 9 |
| 13 May after | 25.6 °C | 57 % | 49 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 14 May after | 23.3 °C | 74 % | 42 km/h | 2.6 mm | Very low 4 |
| 15 May after | 25.6 °C | 78 % | 23 km/h | 3.2 mm | Very low 0 |
| 16 May after | 26.8 °C | 44 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 17 May after | 25.9 °C | 34 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 18 May after | 25.3 °C | 33 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 19 May after | 24.3 °C | 28 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 20 May after | 24.6 °C | 30 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 21 May after | 24.0 °C | 25 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 22 May after | 22.5 °C | 35 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 23 May after | 24.0 °C | 50 % | 41 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 24 May after | 23.8 °C | 58 % | 45 km/h | 0.7 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 25 May after | 24.9 °C | 50 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 26 May after | 26.5 °C | 37 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 27 May after | 23.2 °C | 28 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 10 May 2023 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 230Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 27,044 haLivingstone19 November 2019 · 37 days · 6 km away
- 107,042 haLivingstoneSeptember 2025 · 34 days · 11 km away
- 111,933 haLivingstone19 August 2017 · 51 days · 12 km away
- 22,799 haLivingstone5 October 2021 · 13 days · 13 km away
- 42,277 haLivingstone10 August 2019 · 35 days · 15 km away
- 20,918 haLivingstoneSeptember 2021 · 14 days · 25 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Livingstone fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 May 2023 and 10 May 2023: 2 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 7,988 hectares (79.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Livingstone (8,025 ha, 0.7 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 26.8 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, 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.
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
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. 230 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.