Orzhytsia fire, 15 September 2024 Оржицький район · Orzhytsia, Semenivka
The fire started on 15 September 2024 in Orzhytsia, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 677 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 6th largest in Poltava Oblast since 2016 (of 45 with a page). Number 203 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.
The power measured by the satellite is low (17.2 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
- 677ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 7days
- 15 Sept 2024 – 21 Sept 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 15 Sept
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 84
- in a single hotspot: 17 MW
- Danger at start
- 53
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 88MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
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 one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 486 ha in 2021, 590 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 606 ha that had burned before.
- 486 ha Orzhytsia fire, March 2021 1,388 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 480 ha Orzhytsia fire, March 2022 839 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 109 ha Orzhytsia fire, March 2022 217 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Kyiv boundary: geoBoundaries · OpenStreetMap, Wambacher · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
653 ha reached on 16 Sept0.6 %
-
23 ha reached on 17 Sept0.0 %
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
- Other natural land51 %
- Mixed forest43 %
- Agricultural areas5.3 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Sept | 28.0 °C | 18 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 16 Sept | 27.4 °C | 25 % | 59 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 17 Sept | 26.6 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 18 Sept | 21.4 °C | 35 % | 36 km/h | 2.2 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 19 Sept | 24.0 °C | 20 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 20 Sept | 25.2 °C | 31 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 21 Sept | 24.5 °C | 32 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 22 Sept after | 26.1 °C | 36 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 23 Sept after | 25.7 °C | 33 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 24 Sept after | 27.3 °C | 29 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 25 Sept after | 26.5 °C | 32 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 26 Sept after | 24.6 °C | 35 % | 40 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 37 |
| 27 Sept after | 25.8 °C | 44 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 28 Sept after | 28.4 °C | 34 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 29 Sept after | 24.8 °C | 37 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 30 Sept after | 20.2 °C | 42 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 1 Oct after | 22.5 °C | 30 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
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 14 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 84Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 839 haOrzhytsia Оржицький район16 March 2022 · 3 days · 1 km away
- 1,388 haOrzhytsia Оржицький район27 March 2021 · 4 days · 2 km away
- 972 haSemenivka Семенівський районSeptember 2024 · 8 days · 7 km away
- 524 haOrzhytsia Оржицький район20 March 2022 · 2 days · 25 km away
- 2,346 haChornukhy Чорнухинський районMarch 2025 · 2 days · 29 km away
- 605 haKhorol Хорольський районMarch 2025 · 3 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Orzhytsia fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 September 2024 to 21 September 2024 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 September 2024 to 18 September 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 677 hectares (6.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Orzhytsia (653 ha, 0.6 %); Semenivka (23 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 26.3 km of the centre of Semenivka, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 28.0 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
- 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 16 September 2024 to 18 September 2024. 84 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.
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.