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KZ · Kazakhstan · –

Bayganinskiy fire, 14 August 2017 Байғанин ауданы · Bayganinskiy

Out · last detection 19 Aug 2017, 09:04 UTC

The fire started on 14 August 2017 in Bayganinskiy, Kazakhstan, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 56,255 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the largest fire in Aktobe Region since 2016 (of 99 with a page). Number 3 in Kazakhstan in 2017, of 239.

Burnt area
56,255ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
14 Aug 2017 – 19 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
14 Aug
2017
Heat detections
2,487
in a single hotspot: 448 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
7.6GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Aug19 Aug
19 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

14 Aug 2017 · 1,207 MW · 319 15 Aug 2017 · 27,210 MW · 1128 16 Aug 2017 · 12,291 MW · 775 17 Aug 2017 · 2,922 MW · 230 18 Aug 2017 · 1,735 MW · 32 19 Aug 2017 · 11 MW · 3
15 Aug 18 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
47km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 227 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 36% of the area of London (563 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Bayganinskiy Байғанин ауданы where it started
    57,042 ha reached on 14 Aug
    0.9 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area3.8 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.8 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (GHSL 2015, 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.

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)
14 Aug 29.0 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Aug 30.3 °C 17 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
16 Aug 32.1 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
17 Aug 31.9 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Aug 33.0 °C 14 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Aug 30.8 °C 16 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
20 Aug after 31.8 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
21 Aug after 32.4 °C 14 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Aug after 34.2 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
23 Aug after 33.4 °C 13 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 83
24 Aug after 35.0 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
25 Aug after 35.0 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
26 Aug after 34.2 °C 15 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Aug after 33.4 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
28 Aug after 30.7 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
29 Aug after 33.7 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 48.3, a minimum humidity of 23% and 12 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 11.

FWI at the start 48.3
Minimum humidity 23 %
Days without rain 12
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Temirskiy fire, August 2017
5,343 ha 4 days FWI 47.7 Min. humidity 24 % 187 km away, in 2017

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 11. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
47km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 19 Aug, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Aug 2017
After · 26 Aug 2017

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 2,487Every 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 Kazakhstan

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bayganinskiy fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 August 2017 to 19 August 2017 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 August 2017 to 18 August 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 56,255 hectares (562.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bayganinskiy (57,042 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 76, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Kazakhstan (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: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 18 August 2017 → 19 August 2017.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 August 2017 to 18 August 2017. 2,487 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 2015, 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 comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. 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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.