How long did the Richmond fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 November 2020 to 1 December 2020 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 November 2020 to 25 November 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,323 hectares (103.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Richmond (4,957 ha, 0.2 %); Etheridge (4,362 ha, 0.1 %); Croydon (1,055 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class 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.

AU · Australia · 2020-11-19 → 2020-12-01

Richmond fire, November 2020 Richmond, Etheridge, Croydon

Out · last detection 1 Dec 2020, 03:40 UTC

The fire started on 19 November 2020 in Richmond, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,323 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 735th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 106 in Australia in 2020, of 319.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Richmond · 2018 Richmond · 2023 Etheridge · 2021 Croydon · 2024

Burnt area: 10,323ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 19 Nov 2020 – 1 Dec 2020
Municipalities hit: 3; local government areas
Started on: 19 Nov; 2020
Heat detections: 403; in a single hotspot: 152 MW
Danger at start: 53; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 614MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Nov1 Dec

Play back 1 Dec 2020

How it evolved, day by day

19 Nov 20 Nov 21 Nov 23 Nov 25 Nov 1 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

39°high

50km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 9 Dec.

This area had burned before

17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,173 ha in 2018, 562 ha in 2019.

1,173 ha Richmond fire, December 2018 6,283 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.5% of the area of London (103 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

Richmond where it started

4,957 ha reached on 19 Nov

0.2 %
Etheridge

4,362 ha reached on 21 Nov

0.1 %
Croydon

1,055 ha reached on 19 Nov

0.0 %

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 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)
19 Nov	34.2 °C	21 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
20 Nov	34.5 °C	18 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
21 Nov	35.4 °C	12 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
22 Nov	35.6 °C	13 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
23 Nov	37.4 °C	10 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
24 Nov	38.5 °C	11 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
25 Nov	35.1 °C	21 %	42 km/h	0.5 mm	Extreme 51
26 Nov	35.0 °C	27 %	40 km/h	4.0 mm	Moderate 17
27 Nov	33.9 °C	27 %	35 km/h	2.5 mm	Moderate 21
28 Nov	35.4 °C	19 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
29 Nov	36.6 °C	14 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
30 Nov	37.3 °C	13 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
1 Dec	38.9 °C	18 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
2 Dec after	39.0 °C	12 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
3 Dec after	37.5 °C	17 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
4 Dec after	36.5 °C	18 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
5 Dec after	38.6 °C	14 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
6 Dec after	38.8 °C	19 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
7 Dec after	38.1 °C	21 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
8 Dec after	38.2 °C	15 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
9 Dec after	36.1 °C	22 %	35 km/h	1.5 mm	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Nov 2020

After · 8 Dec 2020

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 · 403Every 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 Richmond fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 November 2020 to 1 December 2020 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 November 2020 to 25 November 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,323 hectares (103.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Richmond (4,957 ha, 0.2 %); Etheridge (4,362 ha, 0.1 %); Croydon (1,055 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 25 November 2020 → 1 December 2020.

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 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 19 November 2020 to 25 November 2020. 403 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