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Bulaevskiy fire, April 2022 Bulaevskiy

Out · last detection 17 Apr 2022, 08:53 UTC

The fire started on 10 April 2022 in Bulaevskiy, Kazakhstan, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,579 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 5 in Kazakhstan in 2022, of 42.

Burnt area
11,579ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
10 Apr 2022 – 17 Apr 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
10 Apr
2022
Heat detections
616
in a single hotspot: 124 MW
Danger at start
1
Very low · FWI index
Energy released
6.5GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

17 Apr 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Apr17 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

1011121314151617

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

The weather it burned in

24°high
57km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.4 mm on 19 Apr.

This area had burned before

42% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,039 ha in 2017, 722 ha in 2018, 613 ha in 2019, 2,188 ha in 2020, 2,045 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,851 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Bulaevskiy where it started
    11,708 ha reached on 7 Apr
    1.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.

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)
6 Apr 5.6 °C 38 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
7 Apr 9.7 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
8 Apr 8.2 °C 23 % 57 km/h 0.6 mm Low 5
9 Apr 9.3 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
10 Apr 10.6 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
11 Apr 12.6 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
12 Apr 14.4 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
13 Apr 17.3 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
14 Apr 20.7 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
15 Apr 23.5 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
16 Apr 17.8 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
17 Apr 13.9 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
18 Apr after 10.4 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
19 Apr after 9.9 °C 31 % 30 km/h 2.4 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Apr 2022
After · 24 Apr 2022

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 616Every 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 Kazakhstan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bulaevskiy fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 April 2022 and 17 April 2022: 8 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,579 hectares (115.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bulaevskiy (11,708 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 23.5 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Kazakhstan (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: 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 112.

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. 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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.