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Bakhmut fire, 15 August 2024 Бахмутський район · Bakhmut

Out · last measured on 16 Aug 2024

The fire started on 15 August 2024 in Bakhmut, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 142 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 663th largest in Donetsk Oblast since 2016 (of 1004 with a page). Number 1407 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.

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We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
142ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
15 Aug 2024 – 16 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
15 Aug
2024
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

28°high
37km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 14 ha in 2023.

What happened to each town

  1. Bakhmut Бахмутський район 108,637 inhabitants · 5.7 km from the centre where it started
    143 ha reached on 15 Aug
    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 land42 %
  • Agricultural areas41 %
  • Mixed forest14 %
  • Artificial surfaces2.8 %

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 area0.46 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.46 hectares of 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)
15 Aug 26.2 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
16 Aug 28.1 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Aug after 28.6 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Aug after 31.6 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Aug after 33.3 °C 12 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
20 Aug after 34.8 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Aug after 35.2 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Aug after 36.1 °C 14 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
23 Aug after 31.5 °C 28 % 47 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 49
24 Aug after 33.8 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Aug after 33.1 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Aug after 33.5 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Aug 2024
After · 23 Aug 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 19 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 11 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak11 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1014 µg/m³
Optical depth0.27
13141516171819
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bakhmut fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 15 August 2024 and 16 August 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 142 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bakhmut (143 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Bakhmut and came within 5.7 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 28.1 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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 ›

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
What do you think is wrong?

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.