How long did the Richmond Valley fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 July 2018 to 15 August 2018 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 July 2018 to 12 August 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,995 hectares (90.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Clarence Valley (8,060 ha, 0.8 %); Richmond Valley (942 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 27.7 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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.

AU · Australia · 2018-07-24 → 2018-08-15

Richmond Valley fire, July 2018 Clarence Valley, Richmond Valley

Out · last detection 15 Aug 2018, 15:25 UTC

The fire started on 24 July 2018 in Richmond Valley, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,995 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 62th largest in New South Wales since 2016 (of 130 with a page). Number 445 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Richmond Valley · 2019 Richmond Valley · 2019 Richmond Valley · 2019

Burnt area: 8,995ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 24 Jul 2018 – 15 Aug 2018
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 24 Jul; 2018
Heat detections: 523; in a single hotspot: 108 MW
Danger at start: 17; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 100MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jul15 Aug

Play back 15 Aug 2018

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jul 28 Jul 1 Aug 4 Aug 7 Aug 10 Aug 13 Aug

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

28°high

43km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.5 mm on 24 Aug.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 522 ha in 2016, 7 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.7% of the area of London (90 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

Clarence Valley

8,060 ha reached on 26 Jul

0.8 %
Richmond Valley where it started

942 ha reached on 25 Jul

0.3 %

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)
24 Jul	25.3 °C	24 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
25 Jul	23.8 °C	28 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
26 Jul	22.5 °C	23 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
27 Jul	24.1 °C	33 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
28 Jul	23.1 °C	41 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
29 Jul	25.3 °C	32 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
30 Jul	21.9 °C	26 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
31 Jul	22.5 °C	18 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
1 Aug	21.6 °C	22 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
2 Aug	21.2 °C	37 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
3 Aug	21.4 °C	45 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
4 Aug	24.1 °C	24 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
5 Aug	24.2 °C	33 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
6 Aug	25.8 °C	35 %	43 km/h	0.5 mm	High 24
7 Aug	21.0 °C	18 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
8 Aug	20.8 °C	22 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
9 Aug	20.7 °C	27 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
10 Aug	21.3 °C	36 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
11 Aug	23.5 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
12 Aug	21.8 °C	13 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
13 Aug	20.2 °C	16 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
14 Aug	23.2 °C	21 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
15 Aug	27.7 °C	13 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
16 Aug after	27.1 °C	14 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
17 Aug after	24.1 °C	30 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
18 Aug after	24.2 °C	18 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
19 Aug after	21.1 °C	11 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
20 Aug after	18.7 °C	13 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
21 Aug after	21.9 °C	13 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
22 Aug after	21.1 °C	20 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
23 Aug after	20.7 °C	35 %	35 km/h	0.2 mm	High 27
24 Aug after	20.5 °C	49 %	26 km/h	6.5 mm	Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 17 Jul 2018

After · 22 Aug 2018

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 · 523Every 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 Valley fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 July 2018 to 15 August 2018 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 July 2018 to 12 August 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,995 hectares (90.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Clarence Valley (8,060 ha, 0.8 %); Richmond Valley (942 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 27.7 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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

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: 12 August 2018 → 15 August 2018.
26 October 2026 Start date: 30 July 2018 → 24 July 2018.

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?

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 30 July 2018 to 12 August 2018. 523 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