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Luhyny fire, 5 April 2020 Лугинський район · Luhyny, Olevsk

Out · last detection 8 Apr 2020, 09:50 UTC

The fire started on 5 April 2020 in Luhyny, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 208 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 92th largest in Zhytomyr Oblast since 2016 (of 179 with a page). Number 98 in Ukraine in 2020, of 132.

The power measured by the satellite is low (10.8 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: Luhyny · 2020Olevsk · 2020Ovruch · 2020Olevsk · 2020

Burnt area
208ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
5 Apr 2020 – 8 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
5 Apr
2020
Heat detections
20
in a single hotspot: 11 MW
Danger at start
13
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
64MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Apr8 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

8 Apr 2020 · 64 MW · 20

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

The weather it burned in

19°high
43km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 13 Apr.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Luhyny Лугинський район 16,321 inhabitants · 14.7 km from the centre where it started
    169 ha reached on 8 Apr
    0.2 %
  2. Olevsk Олевський район 41,423 inhabitants · 59.9 km from the centre
    40 ha reached on 8 Apr
    0.0 %

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

  • Coniferous forest73 %
  • Mixed forest18 %
  • Other natural land8.6 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
5 Apr 11.3 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
6 Apr 16.6 °C 10 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
7 Apr 19.4 °C 6 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
8 Apr 18.7 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
9 Apr after 22.1 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
10 Apr after 11.6 °C 22 % 54 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
11 Apr after 12.5 °C 19 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
12 Apr after 14.2 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
13 Apr after 22.9 °C 20 % 62 km/h 2.3 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Mar 2020
After · 15 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 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1029 µg/m³
34567891011121314151617181920
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 · 20Every 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 Luhyny fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 5 April 2020 and 8 April 2020: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 208 hectares (2.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Luhyny (169 ha, 0.2 %); Olevsk (40 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Luhyny and came within 14.7 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 19.4 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 20 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 2020, 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.