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Kostopil fire, October 2023 Костопільський район · Kostopil, Rivne

Out · last detection 2 Oct 2023, 10:41 UTC

The fire started on 1 October 2023 in Kostopil, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 315 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 59th largest in Rivne Oblast since 2016 (of 167 with a page). Number 135 in Ukraine in 2023, of 491.

The power measured by the satellite is low (12.7 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: Rivne · 2020Kostopil · 2025Kostopil · 2022Kostopil · 2020

Burnt area
315ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
1 Oct 2023 – 2 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
1 Oct
2023
Heat detections
8
in a single hotspot: 13 MW
Danger at start
9
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
22MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Oct2 Oct
2 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

1 Oct 2023 · 19 MW · 4 2 Oct 2023 · 25 MW · 4
1 Oct 2 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

18°high
37km/h · peak gust
46%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.9 mm on 7 Oct.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Kostopil Костопільський район 64,351 inhabitants · 31.7 km from the centre where it started
    173 ha reached on 1 Oct
    0.1 %
  2. Rivne Рівненський район 89,776 inhabitants · 45.4 km from the centre
    141 ha reached on 1 Oct
    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

  • Other natural land69 %
  • Agricultural areas16 %
  • Mixed forest15 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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 Oct 17.6 °C 51 % 37 km/h 1.4 mm Low 9
2 Oct 17.8 °C 46 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
3 Oct after 22.3 °C 45 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
4 Oct after 18.5 °C 47 % 48 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 18
5 Oct after 17.9 °C 47 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
6 Oct after 15.5 °C 46 % 45 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 14
7 Oct after 17.6 °C 59 % 64 km/h 3.9 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Sept 2023
After · 9 Oct 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 2 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 18 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak18 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1019 µg/m³
Optical depth0.46
293012345
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 · 8Every 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?
Copernicus dates it between 1 October 2023 and 2 October 2023: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 315 hectares (3.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kostopil (173 ha, 0.1 %); Rivne (141 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Kostopil and came within 31.7 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 17.8 °C, humidity dropped to 46 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 13, 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
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. 8 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.