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Izium fire, 31 March 2024 Ізюмський район · Izium

Out · last detection 2 Apr 2024, 00:21 UTC

The fire started on 31 March 2024 in Izium, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 212 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 185th largest in Kharkiv Oblast since 2016 (of 558 with a page). Number 888 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.

Compare with…
Burnt area
212ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
31 Mar 2024 – 3 Apr 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
31 Mar
2024
Heat detections
16
in a single hotspot: 62 MW
Danger at start
12
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
54MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Mar3 Apr
2 Apr 2024

How it evolved, day by day

31 Mar 2024 · 2 MW · 3 1 Apr 2024 · 157 MW · 12 2 Apr 2024 · 1 MW · 1
31 Mar 1 Apr 2 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

25°high
48km/h · peak gust
18%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. Izium Ізюмський район 17,029 inhabitants · 18.8 km from the centre where it started
    210 ha reached on 31 Mar
    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

  • Agricultural areas74 %
  • Mixed forest14 %
  • Other natural land12 %

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)
1 Apr 24.5 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
2 Apr 25.4 °C 18 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
3 Apr 18.2 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 16
4 Apr after 19.9 °C 22 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
5 Apr after 11.7 °C 43 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
6 Apr after 17.7 °C 32 % 22 km/h 0.2 mm Low 10
7 Apr after 22.1 °C 29 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
8 Apr after 24.3 °C 26 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
9 Apr after 24.8 °C 27 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
10 Apr after 26.4 °C 23 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
11 Apr after 28.7 °C 15 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
12 Apr after 25.3 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Mar 2024
After · 10 Apr 2024

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 2 April 2024 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak29 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1046 µg/m³
Optical depth1.03
29303112345
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 · 16Every 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 31 March 2024 to 3 April 2024 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 April 2024 to 2 April 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 212 hectares (2.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Izium (210 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Izium and came within 18.8 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 25.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, class Moderate.
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
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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 1 April 2024 to 2 April 2024. 16 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.