How long did the Bakhmut fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 17 August 2026 and 20 August 2026: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 537 hectares (5.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Bakhmut (536 ha, 0.3 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The closest fire to a town centre came within 30.3 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 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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.

UA · Ukraine · 2026-08-17 → 2026-08-20

Bakhmut fire, 17 August 2026 Бахмутський район · Bakhmut

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

The fire started on 17 August 2026 in Bakhmut, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 537 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 99th largest in Donetsk Oblast since 2016 (of 1004 with a page). Number 121 in Ukraine in 2026, of 984.

The power measured by the satellite is low (26.5 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: 537ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 4days; 17 Aug 2026 – 20 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 17 Aug; 2026
Heat detections: 22; in a single hotspot: 26 MW
Danger at start: 18; Moderate · FWI index
Energy released: 242MW; sum of detected power

Play back 19 Aug 2026

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Aug20 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

1819

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

43km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 28 Aug.

This area had burned before

32% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 121 ha in 2024, 51 ha in 2025.

What happened to each town

Bakhmut Бахмутський район 108,637 inhabitants · 30.3 km from the town where it started

536 ha reached on 16 Aug

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 areas71 %
Other natural land26 %
Mixed forest2.4 %

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)
17 Aug	29.5 °C	29 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
18 Aug	31.4 °C	20 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
19 Aug	29.1 °C	41 %	43 km/h	1.3 mm	Moderate 18
20 Aug	26.4 °C	33 %	26 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 16
21 Aug after	31.0 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
22 Aug after	33.7 °C	22 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
23 Aug after	34.3 °C	17 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
24 Aug after	26.4 °C	28 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
25 Aug after	26.0 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 Aug after	28.2 °C	27 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
27 Aug after	23.0 °C	54 %	39 km/h	0.5 mm	High 24
28 Aug after	22.6 °C	53 %	45 km/h	2.3 mm	Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 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 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak27 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1034 µg/m³

Optical depth0.67

WHO 15

151617181920212223

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 · 22Every 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?: Copernicus dates it between 17 August 2026 and 20 August 2026: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 537 hectares (5.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Bakhmut (536 ha, 0.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The closest fire to a town centre came within 30.3 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 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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

ДСНС · State Emergency Service ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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.

Where it burned