Skip to content
worldfires
en
UA · Ukraine · →

Holo Prystan fire, 7 July 2023 Скадовський район · Holo Prystan, Skadovsk, Oleshky

Out · last detection 11 Jul 2023, 11:37 UTC

The fire started on 7 July 2023 in Holo Prystan, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,172 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 75th largest in Kherson Oblast since 2016 (of 1103 with a page). Number 27 in Ukraine in 2023, of 491.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area
1,172ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
7 Jul 2023 – 11 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
3
districts
Started on
7 Jul
2023
Heat detections
45
in a single hotspot: 159 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
170MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Jul11 Jul
11 Jul 2023

How it evolved, day by day

7 Jul 2023 · 64 MW · 23 8 Jul 2023 · 434 MW · 18 11 Jul 2023 · 13 MW · 4
7 Jul 8 Jul 11 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

34°high
52km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.6 mm on 12 Jul.

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 0.7% of the area of London (12 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. Holo Prystan Скадовський район 127,000 inhabitants · 25.8 km from the centre where it started
    647 ha reached on 7 Jul
    0.3 %
  2. Skadovsk Скадовський район 17.2 km from the centre
    413 ha reached on 8 Jul
    0.5 %
  3. Oleshky Олешківський район 70,367 inhabitants · 19.5 km from the centre
    113 ha reached on 8 Jul
    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

  • Mixed forest80 %
  • Other natural land15 %
  • Coniferous forest4.6 %
  • Agricultural areas0.5 %

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)
7 Jul 34.5 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
8 Jul 29.5 °C 54 % 46 km/h 6.7 mm Very low 4
9 Jul 23.3 °C 54 % 52 km/h 2.3 mm Very low 5
10 Jul 26.3 °C 43 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Low 11
11 Jul 25.6 °C 38 % 35 km/h 2.1 mm Low 6
12 Jul after 25.6 °C 43 % 31 km/h 10.6 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jun 2023
After · 18 Jul 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 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1028 µg/m³
Optical depth0.54
567891011121314
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)

Detections table · 45Every 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 Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Holo Prystan fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 7 July 2023 and 11 July 2023: 5 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,172 hectares (11.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Holo Prystan (647 ha, 0.3 %); Skadovsk (413 ha, 0.5 %); Oleshky (113 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 17.2 km of the centre of Skadovsk, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, class 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. 45 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.

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.