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Drohobych fire, 11 March 2022 Дрогобицький район · Drohobych

Out · last measured on 15 Mar 2022

The fire started on 11 March 2022 in Drohobych, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 326 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 18th largest in Lviv Oblast since 2016 (of 105 with a page). Number 145 in Ukraine in 2022, of 531.

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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
326ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
11 Mar 2022 – 15 Mar 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
11 Mar
2022
Danger at start
1
Very low · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

11°high
35km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 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. Drohobych Дрогобицький район 23.6 km from the centre where it started
    327 ha reached on 11 Mar
    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

  • Mixed forest49 %
  • Other natural land33 %
  • Agricultural areas15 %
  • Broadleaved forest2.8 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
11 Mar 1.5 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
12 Mar 5.1 °C 34 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
13 Mar 5.8 °C 45 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
14 Mar 10.7 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
15 Mar 14.7 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
16 Mar after 7.9 °C 51 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
17 Mar after 6.1 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
18 Mar after 6.2 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
19 Mar after 7.3 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
20 Mar after 8.9 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
21 Mar after 12.8 °C 26 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
22 Mar after 17.3 °C 29 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
23 Mar after 19.5 °C 16 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
24 Mar after 12.4 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Mar 2022
After · 22 Mar 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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 16 March 2022 the air beside the fire reached 41 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak41 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1043 µg/m³
91011121314151617
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 Drohobych fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 March 2022 to 15 March 2022 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 March 2022 to 14 March 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 326 hectares (3.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Drohobych (327 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Drohobych and came within 23.6 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 10.7 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 2, 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 March 2022 to 14 March 2022. 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 2020, 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.