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Kostopil fire, 8 April 2020 Костопільський район · Kostopil

Out · last detection 11 Apr 2020, 10:33 UTC

The fire started on 8 April 2020 in Kostopil, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,584 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the largest fire in Rivne Oblast since 2016 (of 167 with a page). Number 13 in Ukraine in 2020, of 132.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kostopil · 2025Kostopil · 2022Kostopil · 2026Rivne · 2026

Burnt area
3,584ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
7days
8 Apr 2020 – 14 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
8 Apr
2020
Heat detections
64
in a single hotspot: 158 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
422MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Apr14 Apr
11 Apr 2020

How it evolved, day by day

8 Apr 2020 · 18 MW · 4 9 Apr 2020 · 1,400 MW · 30 10 Apr 2020 · 261 MW · 29 11 Apr 2020 · 9 MW · 1
8 Apr 9 Apr 10 Apr 11 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

22°high
67km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 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.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (36 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. Kostopil Костопільський район 64,351 inhabitants · 26.0 km from the centre where it started
    3,563 ha reached on 8 Apr
    1.4 %

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 land36 %
  • Mixed forest36 %
  • Broadleaved forest17 %
  • Agricultural areas11 %

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)
9 Apr 22.0 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
10 Apr 12.7 °C 21 % 52 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
11 Apr 12.9 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
12 Apr 15.2 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
13 Apr 21.1 °C 26 % 67 km/h 3.3 mm Low 8
14 Apr 8.3 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 11
15 Apr after 7.8 °C 31 % 67 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 19
16 Apr after 19.6 °C 21 % 79 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Apr after 14.3 °C 23 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
18 Apr after 11.9 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
19 Apr after 13.3 °C 22 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
20 Apr after 8.8 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
21 Apr after 11.9 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
22 Apr after 16.6 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
23 Apr after 18.2 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
24 Apr after 19.2 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Apr 2020
After · 21 Apr 2020

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 8 April 2020 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak29 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1036 µg/m³
67891011121314151617
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 · 64Every 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 Kostopil fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 April 2020 to 14 April 2020 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 April 2020 to 14 April 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,584 hectares (35.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kostopil (3,563 ha, 1.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Kostopil and came within 26.0 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 22.0 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 67 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 9 April 2020 to 14 April 2020. 64 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.