How long did the Izium fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 May 2022 to 4 May 2022 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 May 2022 to 2 May 2022.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 188 hectares (1.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Izium (188 ha, 0.1 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Izium and came within 12.6 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 16.0 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 26 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 8, class 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.

UA · Ukraine · 2022-05-02 → 2022-05-04

Izium fire, 2 May 2022 Ізюмський район · Izium

Out · last measured on 4 May 2022

The fire started on 2 May 2022 in Izium, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 188 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 225th largest in Kharkiv Oblast since 2016 (of 558 with a page). Number 280 in Ukraine in 2022, of 531.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Izium · 2024 Izium · 2024 Izium · 2024 Barvinkove · 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: 188ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 3days; 2 May 2022 – 4 May 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 2 May; 2022
Danger at start: 8; Low · FWI index

The weather it burned in

16°high

26km/h · peak gust

29%lowest humidity

It had gone one day 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

Izium Ізюмський район 17,029 inhabitants · 12.6 km from the centre where it started

188 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

Other natural land94 %
Mixed forest4.7 %
Agricultural areas1.6 %

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)
2 May	16.0 °C	29 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
3 May	19.3 °C	21 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
4 May	20.1 °C	29 %	30 km/h	0.8 mm	Low 9
5 May after	16.2 °C	19 %	49 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 18
6 May after	17.4 °C	15 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
7 May after	18.8 °C	9 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
8 May after	21.4 °C	14 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
9 May after	22.4 °C	25 %	52 km/h	0.7 mm	High 22
10 May after	14.1 °C	25 %	51 km/h	0.2 mm	High 22
11 May after	18.6 °C	23 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
12 May after	25.7 °C	16 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Apr 2022

After · 11 May 2022

Before After

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 4 May 2022 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1027 µg/m³

WHO 15

3012345

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 Izium fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 May 2022 to 4 May 2022 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 May 2022 to 2 May 2022.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 188 hectares (1.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Izium (188 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Izium and came within 12.6 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 16.0 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 26 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 8, class 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 ›

ДСНС · State Emergency Service ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 101 · 112.

How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 May 2022 to 2 May 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.

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.

Where it burned