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Bilovodsk fire, 1 September 2023 Біловодський район · Bilovodsk

Out · last detection 1 Sept 2023, 10:21 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2023 in Bilovodsk, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 126 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 721th largest in Luhansk Oblast since 2016 (of 909 with a page). Number 377 in Ukraine in 2023, of 491.

The power measured by the satellite is low (10.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

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Suggestions: Bilovodsk · 2023Bilovodsk · 2024Bilovodsk · 2025Bilovodsk · 2024

Burnt area
126ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
1 Sept 2023 – 1 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
1 Sept
2023
Heat detections
2
in a single hotspot: 11 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
14MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept1 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 2023 · 14 MW · 2

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
26km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Bilovodsk Біловодський район 24,270 inhabitants · 32.2 km from the centre where it started
    126 ha reached on 1 Sept
    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

  • Agricultural areas79 %
  • Other natural land21 %

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)
1 Sept 31.6 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Sept after 27.5 °C 42 % 28 km/h 0.6 mm High 28
3 Sept after 28.6 °C 33 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
4 Sept after 28.2 °C 36 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
5 Sept after 25.6 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
6 Sept after 28.1 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Sept after 23.3 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 Sept after 20.4 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Sept after 13.9 °C 48 % 47 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
10 Sept after 20.6 °C 45 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Sept after 20.1 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Aug 2023
After · 8 Sept 2023

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 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak16 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1021 µg/m³
Optical depth0.96
30311234
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 · 2Every 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 Bilovodsk fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 1 September 2023 and 1 September 2023: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 126 hectares (1.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bilovodsk (126 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Bilovodsk and came within 32.2 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 31.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 26 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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 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.

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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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2 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.