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Bakhmut fire, 20 July 2025 Бахмутський район · Bakhmut

Out · last measured on 22 Jul 2025

The fire started on 20 July 2025 in Bakhmut, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 492 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 108th largest in Donetsk Oblast since 2016 (of 1004 with a page). Number 180 in Ukraine in 2025, of 1359.

Burnt area
492ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
20 Jul 2025 – 22 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
20 Jul
2025
Heat detections
9
in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jul22 Jul

The weather it burned in

34°high
50km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.2 mm on 23 Jul.

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 · 30.5 km from the town where it started
    491 ha reached on 18 Jul
    0.3 %

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

  • Agricultural areas66 %
  • Other natural land24 %
  • Mixed forest9.0 %
  • Artificial surfaces0.8 %

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)
18 Jul 34.1 °C 31 % 31 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 20
19 Jul 32.4 °C 41 % 50 km/h 4.8 mm Low 6
20 Jul 29.5 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
21 Jul 30.8 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Jul 33.0 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.3 mm High 31
23 Jul after 32.2 °C 39 % 41 km/h 3.2 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Jul 2025
After · 29 Jul 2025

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 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak25 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1027 µg/m³
Optical depth0.54
1819202122232425
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 · 9Every 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 20 July 2025 and 22 July 2025: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 492 hectares (4.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bakhmut (491 ha, 0.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 30.5 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 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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

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.

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.

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.