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KZ · Kazakhstan · –

Dzhangil`dinskiy fire, 20 July 2019 Жангелді ауданы · Dzhangil`dinskiy, Irgizskiy, Ulytauskiy

Out · last detection 31 Jul 2019, 08:33 UTC

The fire started on 20 July 2019 in Dzhangil`dinskiy, Kazakhstan, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 36,759 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Kostanay Region since 2016 (of 74 with a page). Number 2 in Kazakhstan in 2019, of 163.

Burnt area
36,759ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
20 Jul 2019 – 31 Jul 2019
Municipalities hit
3
districts
Started on
20 Jul
2019
Heat detections
1,798
in a single hotspot: 138 MW
Danger at start
73
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.5GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jul31 Jul
31 Jul 2019

How it evolved, day by day

20 Jul 2019 · 4,783 MW · 254 21 Jul 2019 · 3,091 MW · 261 22 Jul 2019 · 2,114 MW · 224 23 Jul 2019 · 874 MW · 165 24 Jul 2019 · 2,429 MW · 381 25 Jul 2019 · 2,962 MW · 318 26 Jul 2019 · 150 MW · 34 27 Jul 2019 · 42 MW · 8 28 Jul 2019 · 9 MW · 2 29 Jul 2019 · 840 MW · 72 30 Jul 2019 · 686 MW · 76 31 Jul 2019 · 9 MW · 3
20 Jul 23 Jul 26 Jul 29 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
54km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 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.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 23% of the area of London (368 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Dzhangil`dinskiy Жангелді ауданы where it started
    22,756 ha reached on 20 Jul
    0.6 %
  2. Irgizskiy Ырғыз ауданы
    11,421 ha reached on 22 Jul
    0.3 %
  3. Ulytauskiy Ұлытау ауданы
    2,012 ha reached on 21 Jul
    0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.

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)

Started with Very dry air: 18 % of the area in Kazakhstan

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
20 Jul 39.6 °C 12 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
21 Jul 36.9 °C 17 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
22 Jul 33.1 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
23 Jul 32.4 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
24 Jul 32.8 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
25 Jul 33.6 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
26 Jul 30.6 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
27 Jul 32.7 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
28 Jul 30.9 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 52
29 Jul 30.6 °C 27 % 54 km/h 0.3 mm Extreme 59
30 Jul 32.9 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Jul 34.1 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Aug after 35.8 °C 22 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
2 Aug after 24.7 °C 22 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
3 Aug after 27.3 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
4 Aug after 28.5 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Aug after 32.1 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Aug after 35.3 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
7 Aug after 28.2 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
8 Aug after 28.3 °C 16 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
9 Aug after 29.3 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
10 Aug after 32.9 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 72.6, a minimum humidity of 12% and 16 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 14.

FWI at the start 72.6
Minimum humidity 12 %
Days without rain 16
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Ulytauskiy fire, July 2017
3,275 ha 6 days FWI 73.3 Min. humidity 15 % 239 km away, in 2017

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.2 mm on 12 Jul.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 14. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
54km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 31 Jul, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Jul 2019
After · 7 Aug 2019

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 · 1,798Every 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 Dzhangil`dinskiy fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 July 2019 and 31 July 2019: 12 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 36,759 hectares (367.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Dzhangil`dinskiy (22,756 ha, 0.6 %); Irgizskiy (11,421 ha, 0.3 %); Ulytauskiy (2,012 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 75, class Very extreme.
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 · 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.

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 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,798 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 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.