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Bakhmut fire, 8 July 2026 Бахмутський район · Bakhmut

Out · last detection 8 Jul 2026, 10:11 UTC

The fire started on 8 July 2026 in Bakhmut, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 249 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 314th largest in Donetsk Oblast since 2016 (of 1004 with a page). Number 357 in Ukraine in 2026, of 984.

Burnt area
249ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
8 Jul 2026 – 8 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
8 Jul
2026
Heat detections
1
in a single hotspot: 34 MW
Energy released
34MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jul8 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

8

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

This area had burned before

37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 92 ha in 2024, 1 ha in 2025.

What happened to each town

  1. Bakhmut Бахмутський район 108,637 inhabitants · 36.1 km from the town where it started
    248 ha reached on 8 Jul
    0.2 %

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 areas54 %
  • Other natural land44 %
  • Mixed forest1.2 %

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)
9 Jul after 29.0 °C 38 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
10 Jul after 25.0 °C 64 % 26 km/h 12.9 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Jul 2026
After · 15 Jul 2026

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 8 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1030 µg/m³
Optical depth0.54
67891011
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 · 1Every 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 8 July 2026 and 8 July 2026: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 249 hectares (2.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bakhmut (248 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 36.1 km of Bakhmut. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
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
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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.