Bakhmut fire, 12 September 2024 Бахмутський район · Bakhmut
The fire started on 12 September 2024 in Bakhmut, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,582 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 18th largest in Donetsk Oblast since 2016 (of 1004 with a page). Number 57 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.
The power measured by the satellite is low (5.5 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…
- Burnt area
- 1,582ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 3days
- 12 Sept 2024 – 14 Sept 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 12 Sept
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 6
- in a single hotspot: 6 MW
- Danger at start
- 36
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 7MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 275 ha in 2022, 318 ha in 2023.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Kyiv boundary: geoBoundaries · OpenStreetMap, Wambacher · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
1,575 ha reached on 13 Sept0.9 %
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
- Agricultural areas48 %
- Other natural land48 %
- Mixed forest3.5 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Sept | 28.3 °C | 26 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 13 Sept | 27.6 °C | 25 % | 54 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 43 |
| 14 Sept | 28.3 °C | 20 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 15 Sept after | 26.0 °C | 26 % | 65 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 16 Sept after | 24.9 °C | 24 % | 68 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 17 Sept after | 24.6 °C | 25 % | 63 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 18 Sept after | 22.0 °C | 15 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 19 Sept after | 21.3 °C | 16 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 20 Sept after | 23.6 °C | 25 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 21 Sept after | 22.2 °C | 27 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 22 Sept after | 24.8 °C | 28 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 23 Sept after | 24.4 °C | 29 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 24 Sept after | 22.9 °C | 26 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 11 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 6Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,104 haBakhmut Бахмутський районJune 2022 · 9 days · 3 km away
- 2,237 haBakhmut Бахмутський район5 October 2024 · 2 days · 5 km away
- 1,705 haBakhmut Бахмутський район28 July 2025 · 4 days · 5 km away
- 4,817 haPerevalsk Перевальський район4 July 2025 · 8 days · 11 km away
- 2,982 haPerevalsk Перевальський район28 March 2024 · 2 days · 12 km away
- 6,751 haPopasna Попаснянський район15 September 2024 · 5 days · 17 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bakhmut fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 12 September 2024 and 14 September 2024: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,582 hectares (15.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Bakhmut (1,575 ha, 0.9 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Bakhmut and came within 43.7 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 28.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 6 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.
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.