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Bilmak fire, 20 July 2026 Більмацький район · Bilmak, Polohy

Out · last detection 21 Jul 2026, 09:28 UTC

The fire started on 20 July 2026 in Bilmak, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 529 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 41th largest in Zaporizhzhia Oblast since 2016 (of 490 with a page). Number 126 in Ukraine in 2026, of 984.

The power measured by the satellite is low (11.3 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
529ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
20 Jul 2026 – 20 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
20 Jul
2026
Heat detections
12
in a single hotspot: 11 MW
Danger at start
18
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
75MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

21 Jul 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jul20 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

2021

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
14km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.5 mm on 23 Jul.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Bilmak Більмацький район 21,359 inhabitants · 24.7 km from the town where it started
    300 ha reached on 20 Jul
    0.2 %
  2. Polohy Пологівський район 39,115 inhabitants · 13.5 km from the town
    228 ha reached on 20 Jul
    0.2 %

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 areas90 %
  • Other natural land8.8 %
  • Other land cover1.5 %

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)
20 Jul 30.5 °C 25 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
21 Jul after 32.5 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
22 Jul after 28.5 °C 26 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
23 Jul after 27.2 °C 32 % 20 km/h 9.5 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Jul 2026
After · 27 Jul 2026

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 23 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 13 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak13 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1018 µg/m³
Optical depth0.72
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 · 12Every 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 Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bilmak fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 20 July 2026 and 20 July 2026: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 529 hectares (5.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bilmak (300 ha, 0.2 %); Polohy (228 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 13.5 km of Polohy. 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 30.5 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 14 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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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.