How long did the Bakhmut fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (20 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 20 August 2026 (2 days from 19 August 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 165 hectares (1.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Bakhmut (165 ha, 0.1 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Bakhmut and came within 17.9 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 28.5 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, 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.

UA · Ukraine · 2026-08-19 → 2026-08-20

Bakhmut fire, 19 August 2026 Бахмутський район · Bakhmut

Out · last detection 19 Aug 2026, 10:26 UTC

The fire started on 19 August 2026 in Bakhmut, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 165 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 553th largest in Donetsk Oblast since 2016 (of 1004 with a page). Number 562 in Ukraine in 2026, of 984.

The power measured by the satellite is low (9.3 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…

Suggestions: Bakhmut · 2025 Popasna · 2024 Perevalsk · 2025 Perevalsk · 2024

Burnt area: 165ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: ≈ 2days; 19 Aug 2026 – 20 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 19 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 5; in a single hotspot: 9 MW
Danger at start: 18; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 39MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Aug20 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

19 Aug 2026 · 39 MW · 5

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

The weather it burned in

28°high

34km/h · peak gust

33%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

48% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 11 ha in 2022, 26 ha in 2024, 51 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 80 ha that had burned before.

47 ha Bakhmut fire, August 2025 329 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Bakhmut Бахмутський район 108,637 inhabitants · 17.9 km from the centre where it started

165 ha reached on 19 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

Agricultural areas52 %
Other natural land45 %
Mixed forest3.6 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
19 Aug	28.5 °C	39 %	34 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 18
20 Aug	27.2 °C	33 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 20
21 Aug after	32.1 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
22 Aug after	34.3 °C	24 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
23 Aug after	34.3 °C	17 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
24 Aug after	27.0 °C	27 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
25 Aug after	26.3 °C	27 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 Aug after	27.7 °C	29 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
27 Aug after	20.3 °C	60 %	32 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 16
28 Aug after	24.3 °C	47 %	50 km/h	0.6 mm	High 23
29 Aug after	28.3 °C	31 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
30 Aug after	27.3 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Aug 2026

After · 27 Aug 2026

Before After

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 22 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1032 µg/m³

Optical depth0.61

WHO 15

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 · 5Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bakhmut fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (20 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 20 August 2026 (2 days from 19 August 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 165 hectares (1.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Bakhmut (165 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Bakhmut and came within 17.9 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 28.5 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

ДСНС · State Emergency Service ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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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.

How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 5 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.

Where it burned