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Bakhmut fire, 15 October 2023 Бахмутський район · Bakhmut

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2023, 09:55 UTC

The fire started on 15 October 2023 in Bakhmut, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 119 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 802th largest in Donetsk Oblast since 2016 (of 1004 with a page). Number 409 in Ukraine in 2023, of 491.

The power measured by the satellite is low (16.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
119ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
15 Oct 2023 – 15 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
15 Oct
2023
Heat detections
4
in a single hotspot: 16 MW
Danger at start
13
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
43MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Oct15 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

15 Oct 2023 · 43 MW · 4

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
26km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.8 mm on 16 Oct.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Bakhmut Бахмутський район 108,637 inhabitants · 65.5 km from the town where it started
    118 ha reached on 15 Oct
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Other natural land93 %
  • Mixed forest6.8 %

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

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)
15 Oct 21.2 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
16 Oct after 17.3 °C 53 % 55 km/h 2.8 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Oct 2023
After · 22 Oct 2023

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 14 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak27 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1036 µg/m³
Optical depth0.24
131415161718
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 · 4Every 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 Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bakhmut fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 15 October 2023 and 15 October 2023: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 119 hectares (1.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bakhmut (118 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 65.5 km of Bakhmut. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 21.2 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 26 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 13, class Moderate.
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

Satellite cross-check

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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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.

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.