How long did the Bakhmut fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 September 2023 to 14 September 2023 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 September 2023 to 13 September 2023.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,051 hectares (10.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Bakhmut (1,045 ha, 0.6 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Bakhmut and came within 47.3 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 21.1 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ukraine (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

UA · Ukraine · 2023-09-08 → 2023-09-14

Bakhmut fire, 8 September 2023 Бахмутський район · Bakhmut

Out · last detection 14 Sept 2023, 23:32 UTC

The fire started on 8 September 2023 in Bakhmut, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,051 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 37th largest in Donetsk Oblast since 2016 (of 1004 with a page). Number 31 in Ukraine in 2023, of 491.

The power measured by the satellite is low (16.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bakhmut · 2025 Bakhmut · 2022 Bakhmut · 2024 Perevalsk · 2025

Burnt area: 1,051ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 7days; 8 Sept 2023 – 14 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 8 Sept; 2023
Heat detections: 17; in a single hotspot: 17 MW
Danger at start: 23; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 79MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Sept14 Sept

Play back 14 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

8 Sept 14 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

21°high

49km/h · peak gust

36%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 21.2 mm on 15 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (11 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

Bakhmut Бахмутський район 108,637 inhabitants · 47.3 km from the centre where it started

1,045 ha reached on 8 Sept

0.6 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official 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.

What burned

Other natural land71 %
Agricultural areas25 %
Mixed forest3.9 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside 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)
8 Sept	18.7 °C	38 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
9 Sept	16.5 °C	37 %	49 km/h	0.1 mm	High 29
10 Sept	19.3 °C	44 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
11 Sept	19.6 °C	47 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
12 Sept	20.0 °C	45 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
13 Sept	19.8 °C	37 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
14 Sept	21.1 °C	36 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
15 Sept after	16.6 °C	57 %	33 km/h	21.2 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Sept 2023

After · 21 Sept 2023

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 12 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1024 µg/m³

Optical depth0.63

WHO 15

67891011121314151617

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 17Every 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 Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bakhmut fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 September 2023 to 14 September 2023 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 September 2023 to 13 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,051 hectares (10.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Bakhmut (1,045 ha, 0.6 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Bakhmut and came within 47.3 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 21.1 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ukraine (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: 101 · 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

ДСНС · State Emergency Service ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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 101 · 112.

How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 September 2023 to 13 September 2023. 17 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. 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 (Public Domain). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.

Where it burned