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Kreminna fire, July 2023 Кремінський район · Kreminna

Out · last detection 25 Jul 2023, 10:34 UTC

The fire started on 25 July 2023 in Kreminna, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 115 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 788th largest in Luhansk Oblast since 2016 (of 909 with a page). Number 426 in Ukraine in 2023, of 491.

The power measured by the satellite is low (4.7 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…
Burnt area
115ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
25 Jul 2023 – 25 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
25 Jul
2023
Heat detections
2
in a single hotspot: 5 MW
Danger at start
8
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
7MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Jul25 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jul 2023 · 7 MW · 2

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
22km/h · peak gust
39%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 15.8 mm on 28 Jul.

This area had burned before

48% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 55 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Kreminna Кремінський район 41,084 inhabitants · 17.6 km from the centre where it started
    115 ha reached on 25 Jul
    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 land86 %
  • Mixed forest9.4 %
  • Agricultural areas4.3 %

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)
25 Jul 28.8 °C 39 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
26 Jul after 31.7 °C 40 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
27 Jul after 33.2 °C 29 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
28 Jul after 25.9 °C 58 % 24 km/h 15.8 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Jul 2023
After · 1 Aug 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 26 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1026 µg/m³
Optical depth0.63
232425262728
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 · 2Every 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 Kreminna fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 25 July 2023 and 25 July 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 115 hectares (1.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kreminna (115 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Kreminna and came within 17.6 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 28.8 °C, humidity dropped to 39 % and gusts hit 22 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 8, 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.

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.

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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. 2 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.