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Bakhmut fire, 20 July 2026 Бахмутський район · Bakhmut

Out · last detection 21 Jul 2026, 09:30 UTC

The fire started on 20 July 2026 in Bakhmut, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 184 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 472th largest in Donetsk Oblast since 2016 (of 1004 with a page). Number 504 in Ukraine in 2026, of 984.

The power measured by the satellite is low (7.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
184ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
20 Jul 2026 – 20 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
20 Jul
2026
Heat detections
4
in a single hotspot: 7 MW
Danger at start
13
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
22MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

21 Jul 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jul20 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

2021

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
8km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 24 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 · 34.8 km from the town where it started
    183 ha reached on 20 Jul
    0.1 %

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 areas94 %
  • Mixed forest3.3 %
  • Other natural land2.7 %

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)
20 Jul 31.0 °C 25 % 8 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
21 Jul after 33.0 °C 21 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
22 Jul after 27.1 °C 35 % 16 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 18
23 Jul after 27.0 °C 35 % 18 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 19
24 Jul after 25.5 °C 43 % 19 km/h 1.9 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Jul 2026
After · 27 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 21 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1024 µg/m³
Optical depth0.71
181920212223
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 · 4Every 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 2026 and 20 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 184 hectares (1.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bakhmut (183 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 34.8 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 31.0 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 8 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 13, class Moderate.
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.

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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.