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Kharkiv fire, 7 September 2024 Харківський район · Kharkiv

Out · last detection 12 Sept 2024, 10:52 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2024 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 184 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 232th largest in Kharkiv Oblast since 2016 (of 558 with a page). Number 1061 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.

The power measured by the satellite is low (21.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kharkiv · 2024Vovchansk · 2024Kharkiv · 2024Chuhuiv · 2024

Burnt area
184ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
8days
7 Sept 2024 – 14 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
7 Sept
2024
Heat detections
4
in a single hotspot: 22 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
15MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept14 Sept
12 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

10 Sept 2024 · 8 MW · 3 12 Sept 2024 · 22 MW · 1
10 Sept 12 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

30°high
56km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 39 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Kharkiv Харківський район 178,602 inhabitants · 21.3 km from the centre where it started
    184 ha reached on 10 Sept
    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 forest85 %
  • Agricultural areas9.4 %
  • Other natural land5.0 %
  • Broadleaved forest0.6 %
  • Artificial surfaces0.6 %

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)
12 Sept 30.3 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.7 mm Very high 46
13 Sept 27.5 °C 27 % 56 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 46
14 Sept 29.4 °C 20 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
15 Sept after 28.2 °C 21 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
16 Sept after 27.6 °C 23 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
17 Sept after 25.8 °C 25 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Sept after 23.8 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Sept after 23.9 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Sept after 24.5 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Sept after 24.7 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Sept after 25.9 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Sept after 24.4 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Sept after 25.3 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Aug 2024
After · 21 Sept 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 11 September 2024 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
PM1057 µg/m³
Optical depth0.31
891011121314151617
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 · 4Every 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 Kharkiv fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 September 2024 to 14 September 2024 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 September 2024 to 14 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 184 hectares (1.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kharkiv (184 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Kharkiv and came within 21.3 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 30.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 September 2024 to 14 September 2024. 4 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.