Beryslav fire, 22 September 2023 Beryslav, Kakhovka
The fire started on 22 September 2023 in Beryslav, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 4,178 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 4th largest in Kherson Oblast since 2016 (of 1103 with a page). The largest in Ukraine in 2023, of 491.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 4,178ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 11days
- 22 Sept 2023 – 2 Oct 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 22 Sept
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 189
- in a single hotspot: 221 MW
- Danger at start
- 53
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 207MW
- 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 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 6 Oct.
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
-
Beryslav where it started3,930 ha reached on 22 Sept2.4 %
-
244 ha reached on 26 Sept0.1 %
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 areas85 %
- Other natural land14 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Sept | 27.2 °C | 24 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 30 Sept | 26.4 °C | 25 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 1 Oct | 26.0 °C | 30 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 2 Oct | 21.0 °C | 36 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 3 Oct after | 20.0 °C | 39 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 4 Oct after | 22.4 °C | 41 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 5 Oct after | 21.4 °C | 35 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 6 Oct after | 20.7 °C | 32 % | 43 km/h | 1.1 mm | Low 9 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 25 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 189Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,581 haBeryslav14 June 2026 · 24 days · 6 km away
- 5,595 haBeryslav2 June 2025 · 11 days · 13 km away
- 3,316 haBeryslav14 June 2026 · 22 days · 15 km away
- 3,374 haHornostaivka Горностаївський район24 June 2026 · 12 days · 17 km away
- 2,403 haKakhovka Каховський район17 June 2026 · 1 day · 17 km away
- 2,957 haBeryslav30 May 2025 · 15 days · 19 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Beryslav fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 September 2023 to 2 October 2023 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 September 2023 to 2 October 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 4,178 hectares (41.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Beryslav (3,930 ha, 2.4 %); Kakhovka (244 ha, 0.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 25.1 km of the centre of Kakhovka, 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 27.2 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
- 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 29 September 2023 to 2 October 2023. 189 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.
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.