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Bakhmut fire, 13 July 2024 Бахмутський район · Bakhmut

Out · last detection 19 Jul 2024, 09:43 UTC

The fire started on 13 July 2024 in Bakhmut, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 135 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 701th largest in Donetsk Oblast since 2016 (of 1004 with a page). Number 1484 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.

The power measured by the satellite is low (7.6 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: Popasna · 2024Bakhmut · 2022Bakhmut · 2025Perevalsk · 2025

Burnt area
135ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
7days
13 Jul 2024 – 19 Jul 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
13 Jul
2024
Heat detections
2
in a single hotspot: 8 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
12MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Jul19 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

19 Jul 2024 · 12 MW · 2

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
35km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 · 29.4 km from the centre where it started
    135 ha reached on 19 Jul
    0.1 %

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 land76 %
  • Agricultural areas17 %
  • 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)
13 Jul 31.6 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Jul 34.3 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Jul 35.6 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 40
16 Jul 36.3 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Jul 36.7 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Jul 37.3 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Jul 34.3 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 38
20 Jul after 31.5 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Jul after 33.4 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Jul after 24.9 °C 48 % 39 km/h 0.3 mm High 30
23 Jul after 29.9 °C 31 % 49 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
24 Jul after 26.0 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Jul 2024
After · 26 Jul 2024

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 17 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 10 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak10 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1012 µg/m³
Optical depth0.61
11121314151617
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 · 2Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 July 2024 to 19 July 2024 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 July 2024 to 14 July 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 135 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bakhmut (135 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Bakhmut and came within 29.4 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 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very 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 ›

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.

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
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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 13 July 2024 to 14 July 2024. 2 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.

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.