Berezne fire, April 2020 Березнівський район · Rokytne, Berezne
The fire started on 5 April 2020 in Berezne, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,805 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 2th largest in Rivne Oblast since 2016 (of 167 with a page). Number 16 in Ukraine in 2020, of 132.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Sarny · 2025Sarny · 2020Sarny · 2021Olevsk · 2020
- Burnt area
- 2,805ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 9days
- 5 Apr 2020 – 13 Apr 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 5 Apr
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 122
- in a single hotspot: 68 MW
- Danger at start
- 11
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 223MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 14 Apr.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Kyiv boundary: geoBoundaries · OpenStreetMap, Wambacher · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
2,540 ha reached on 5 Apr1.5 %
-
250 ha reached on 5 Apr0.2 %
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
- Mixed forest66 %
- Broadleaved forest12 %
- Other natural land9.6 %
- Agricultural areas8.2 %
- Coniferous forest4.5 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.64 hectares of built-up land and about 50 residents (GHSL 2020, 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Apr | 11.6 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 11 |
| 6 Apr | 16.9 °C | 8 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 7 Apr | 19.7 °C | 9 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 8 Apr | 18.5 °C | 19 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 9 Apr | 22.3 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 10 Apr | 11.6 °C | 24 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 11 Apr | 12.7 °C | 21 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 12 Apr | 14.9 °C | 17 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 13 Apr | 22.4 °C | 23 % | 66 km/h | 2.4 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 14 Apr after | 8.9 °C | 33 % | 40 km/h | 1.1 mm | Low 7 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 122Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,560 haSarny Сарненський район13 February 2025 · 5 days · 35 km away
- 1,261 haSarny Сарненський район3 April 2020 · 20 days · 35 km away
- 1,524 haSarny Сарненський район21 October 2021 · 5 days · 36 km away
- 5,416 haOlevsk Олевський район10 April 2020 · 13 days · 39 km away
- 1,322 haSarny Сарненський район5 April 2020 · 7 days · 39 km away
- 2,025 haSarny Сарненський район26 February 2025 · 5 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Berezne fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 April 2020 to 13 April 2020 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 April 2020 to 11 April 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,805 hectares (28.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Rokytne (2,540 ha, 1.5 %); Berezne (250 ha, 0.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 16.2 km of the centre of Rokytne, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 22.4 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, 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 · 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.
- Last day with fire: 11 April 2020 → 13 April 2020.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 April 2020 to 11 April 2020. 122 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.