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Kiliia fire, February 2025 Кілійський район · Kiliia

Out · last detection 28 Feb 2025, 11:23 UTC

The fire started on 28 February 2025 in Kiliia, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 279 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.

The power measured by the satellite is low (8.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
279ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
28 Feb 2025 – 2 Mar 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
28 Feb
2025
Heat detections
1
in a single hotspot: 8 MW
Danger at start
5
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
8MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Feb2 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

28 Feb 2025 · 8 MW · 1

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

The weather it burned in

6°high
37km/h · peak gust
63%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 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. Kiliia Кілійський район 12.5 km from the centre where it started
    280 ha reached on 28 Feb
    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 land93 %
  • Agricultural areas7.1 %

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)
28 Feb 6.5 °C 63 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Low 5
1 Mar 6.4 °C 71 % 23 km/h 1.7 mm Very low 3
2 Mar 4.8 °C 89 % 26 km/h 4.8 mm Very low 0
3 Mar after 5.2 °C 63 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Very low 0
4 Mar after 9.7 °C 54 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
5 Mar after 15.8 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
6 Mar after 18.9 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
7 Mar after 18.4 °C 32 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
8 Mar after 16.8 °C 34 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
9 Mar after 15.0 °C 48 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
10 Mar after 13.0 °C 59 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
11 Mar after 19.2 °C 41 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
12 Mar after 19.2 °C 54 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 5.3, a minimum humidity of 63% and 24 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2019: 8.

FWI at the start 5.3
Minimum humidity 63 %
Days without rain 24
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Reni fire, March 2023
204 ha 2 days FWI 1.6 Min. humidity 61 % 71 km away, in 2023

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.6 mm on 10 Mar.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 8. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
37km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 2 Mar, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2019.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Feb 2025
After · 9 Mar 2025

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 26 February 2025 the air beside the fire reached 43 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak43 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1044 µg/m³
Optical depth0.53
26 Feb28 Feb2 Mar4 Mar
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 · 1Every 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 Kiliia fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 28 February 2025 and 2 March 2025: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 279 hectares (2.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kiliia (280 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Kiliia and came within 12.5 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 6.5 °C, humidity dropped to 63 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 5, 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

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

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. One Suomi-NPP VIIRS detection 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.