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Bilozerka fire, 5 September 2023 Білозерський район · Bilozerka

Out · last measured on 5 Sept 2023

The fire started on 5 September 2023 in Bilozerka, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 142 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 818th largest in Kherson Oblast since 2016 (of 1103 with a page). Number 336 in Ukraine in 2023, of 491.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bilozerka · 2025Bilozerka · 2026Holo Prystan · 2024Holo Prystan · 2024

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
142ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
5 Sept 2023 – 5 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
5 Sept
2023
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

29°high
45km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 15 Sept.

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 · 20.0 km from the centre where it started
    142 ha
    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 areas68 %
  • Other natural land32 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area0.15 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.15 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
5 Sept 29.1 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Sept after 29.1 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Sept after 28.6 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Sept after 25.4 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Sept after 26.1 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Sept after 22.4 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Sept after 24.5 °C 32 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Sept after 27.2 °C 27 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Sept after 27.9 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Sept after 26.2 °C 46 % 40 km/h 0.8 mm High 24
15 Sept after 25.2 °C 59 % 45 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Aug 2023
After · 12 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 5 September 2023 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
PM1020 µg/m³
Optical depth0.32
345678
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 5 September 2023 and 5 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 142 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bilozerka (142 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Bilozerka and came within 20.0 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 29.1 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very 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.

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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.