Orzhytsia fire, 28 March 2021 Оржицький район · Orzhytsia
The fire started on 28 March 2021 in Orzhytsia, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 224 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
This entry is probably an agricultural burn of stubble, meadow or peatland, not a wildfire. Before the war, stubble and meadows in Ukraine were burnt every spring and autumn, and the fire often got out of hand. This is our assumption, based on the time of year, ground with almost no woodland and the lack of news about this fire; it is not confirmed. That is why it is left out of the wildfire rankings.
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- Burnt area
- 224ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 28 Mar 2021 – 28 Mar 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 28 Mar
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 8
- in a single hotspot: 115 MW
- Danger at start
- 2
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 313MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
28 Mar 2021 · 313 MW · 8
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 2 Apr.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
What happened to each town
-
223 ha reached on 28 Mar0.2 %
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 land87 %
- Mixed forest13 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Mar | 14.3 °C | 42 % | 23 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very low 2 |
| 29 Mar after | 13.2 °C | 31 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 30 Mar after | 11.2 °C | 36 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 31 Mar after | 11.7 °C | 39 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 1 Apr after | 17.1 °C | 41 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 2 Apr after | 12.0 °C | 55 % | 43 km/h | 2.3 mm | Very low 1 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 28 March 2021 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 524 haOrzhytsia Оржицький район20 March 2022 · 2 days · 8 km away
- 972 haSemenivka Семенівський районSeptember 2024 · 8 days · 10 km away
- 1,388 haOrzhytsia Оржицький район27 March 2021 · 4 days · 16 km away
- 839 haOrzhytsia Оржицький район16 March 2022 · 3 days · 16 km away
- 677 haOrzhytsia Оржицький район15 September 2024 · 7 days · 17 km away
- 315 haChornobai Чорнобаївський район8 March 2025 · 3 days · 18 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Orzhytsia fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 28 March 2021 and 28 March 2021: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 224 hectares (2.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Orzhytsia (223 ha, 0.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Orzhytsia and came within 17.2 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 14.3 °C, humidity dropped to 42 % and gusts hit 23 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 2, class Very 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.
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
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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
- Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.
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.