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Bilozerka fire, April 2020 Білозерський район · Bilozerka

Out · last measured on 13 Apr 2020

The fire started on 10 April 2020 in Bilozerka, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 310 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

This entry is probably an agricultural burn of stubble, meadow or peatland, not a wildfire. Before the war, stubble and meadows in Ukraine were burnt every spring and autumn, and the fire often got out of hand. This is our assumption, based on the time of year, ground with almost no woodland and the lack of news about this fire; it is not confirmed. That is why it is left out of the wildfire rankings.

Compare with…

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We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
310ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
10 Apr 2020 – 13 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
10 Apr
2020
Danger at start
14
Moderate · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

19°high
42km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 14 Apr.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Bilozerka Білозерський район 64,790 inhabitants · 13.3 km from the centre where it started
    309 ha
    0.2 %

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

  • Other natural land91 %
  • Other land cover5.8 %
  • Mixed forest1.9 %
  • Broadleaved forest1.6 %

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)
10 Apr 18.7 °C 39 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
11 Apr 15.3 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
12 Apr 12.4 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
13 Apr 14.3 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
14 Apr after 15.9 °C 53 % 49 km/h 1.2 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Apr 2020
After · 20 Apr 2020

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 14 April 2020 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak17 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1025 µg/m³
8910111213141516
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bilozerka fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 10 April 2020 and 13 April 2020: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 310 hectares (3.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bilozerka (309 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Bilozerka and came within 13.3 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 18.7 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, 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 · 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. No 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.
  • Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.

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.