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Kiliia fire, 1 March 2023 Кілійський район · Kiliia

Out · last measured on 1 Mar 2023

The fire started on 1 March 2023 in Kiliia, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 263 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

This record is fire in the reed beds of the Danube Delta, not a forest fire. Thousands of hectares of reed burn in the delta every year, mostly between January and April, and many of these burns are deliberate. That is why it is left out of the fire rankings.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kiliia · 2022Kiliia · 2026Sulina · 2022Sulina · 2025

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
263ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
1 Mar 2023 – 1 Mar 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
1 Mar
2023
Danger at start
0
Very low · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

7°high
27km/h · peak gust
60%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.9 mm on 11 Mar.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Kiliia Кілійський район 15.9 km from the centre where it started
    262 ha
    0.2 %

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 land100 %

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 Mar 7.4 °C 60 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 0
2 Mar after 5.7 °C 57 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
3 Mar after 7.6 °C 63 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
4 Mar after 10.8 °C 56 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
5 Mar after 7.9 °C 46 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
6 Mar after 8.5 °C 58 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
7 Mar after 13.2 °C 49 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
8 Mar after 15.3 °C 45 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
9 Mar after 16.9 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
10 Mar after 14.2 °C 52 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Low 5
11 Mar after 14.6 °C 72 % 47 km/h 4.9 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Feb 2023
After · 8 Mar 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 4 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak34 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1039 µg/m³
Optical depth0.70
27281234
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 Kiliia fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 1 March 2023 and 1 March 2023: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 263 hectares (2.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kiliia (262 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Kiliia and came within 15.9 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 7.4 °C, humidity dropped to 60 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 0, class Very 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 ›

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. 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.
  • Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.

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.