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Izium fire, 22 September 2023 Ізюмський район · Izium

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2023, 10:34 UTC

The fire started on 22 September 2023 in Izium, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 705 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 28th largest in Kharkiv Oblast since 2016 (of 558 with a page). Number 52 in Ukraine in 2023, of 491.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Izium · 2022Lyman · 2024Sloviansk · 2024Izium · 2024

Burnt area
705ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
6days
22 Sept 2023 – 27 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
22 Sept
2023
Heat detections
39
in a single hotspot: 68 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
98MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Sept27 Sept
27 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

22 Sept 2023 · 9 MW · 2 23 Sept 2023 · 4 MW · 2 25 Sept 2023 · 72 MW · 14 26 Sept 2023 · 313 MW · 13 27 Sept 2023 · 90 MW · 8
22 Sept 23 Sept 25 Sept 26 Sept 27 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

28°high
41km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 6 Oct.

This area had burned before

38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 267 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.4% of the area of London (7.0 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. Izium Ізюмський район 17,029 inhabitants · 10.2 km from the centre where it started
    703 ha reached on 22 Sept
    0.4 %

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 land41 %
  • Agricultural areas41 %
  • Mixed forest18 %

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)
22 Sept 26.1 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Sept 26.4 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Sept 27.6 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Sept 26.9 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Sept 28.2 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
27 Sept 27.9 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Sept after 27.3 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 Sept after 26.3 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 Sept after 26.6 °C 24 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Oct after 25.8 °C 31 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Oct after 18.7 °C 59 % 42 km/h 0.3 mm High 23
3 Oct after 18.3 °C 44 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
4 Oct after 20.6 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
5 Oct after 19.9 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 21
6 Oct after 17.3 °C 46 % 50 km/h 2.6 mm Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Sept 2023
After · 4 Oct 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 20 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak19 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1063 µg/m³
Optical depth0.13
2021222324252627282930
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 · 39Every 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 Izium fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 September 2023 to 27 September 2023 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 September 2023 to 25 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 705 hectares (7.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Izium (703 ha, 0.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Izium and came within 10.2 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 28.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 September 2023 to 25 September 2023. 39 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.