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Bilokurakyne fire, February 2024 Білокуракинський район · Bilokurakyne

Out · last detection 29 Feb 2024, 10:27 UTC

The fire started on 29 February 2024 in Bilokurakyne, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 112 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 804th largest in Luhansk Oblast since 2016 (of 909 with a page). Number 1832 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2093.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bilokurakyne · 2024Starobilsk · 2024Troitske · 2024Troitske · 2025

Burnt area
112ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
29 Feb 2024 – 1 Mar 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
29 Feb
2024
Heat detections
3
in a single hotspot: 90 MW
Danger at start
3
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
185MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Feb1 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

29 Feb 2024 · 185 MW · 3

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

The weather it burned in

8°high
34km/h · peak gust
36%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 24 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Bilokurakyne Білокуракинський район 16,615 inhabitants · 10.9 km from the centre where it started
    111 ha reached on 29 Feb
    0.1 %

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

  • Other natural land58 %
  • Agricultural areas28 %
  • Mixed forest14 %

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 Feb 8.4 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
1 Mar 6.5 °C 51 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
2 Mar after 7.5 °C 39 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
3 Mar after 5.0 °C 43 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
4 Mar after 6.6 °C 46 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
5 Mar after 5.4 °C 51 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
6 Mar after 3.1 °C 57 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
7 Mar after 0.3 °C 58 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
8 Mar after 2.1 °C 47 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
9 Mar after 5.0 °C 39 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
10 Mar after 3.8 °C 49 % 24 km/h 0.9 mm Very low 1
11 Mar after 1.7 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Feb 2024
After · 8 Mar 2024

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 2 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak15 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1019 µg/m³
Optical depth0.20
2728291234
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 · 3Every 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 Bilokurakyne fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 29 February 2024 and 1 March 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 112 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bilokurakyne (111 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Bilokurakyne and came within 10.9 km of its centre. 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 8.4 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 3, class Very low.
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.

RSS Changes to this page

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 101 · 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 3 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.