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Poliske fire, 3 September 2024 Поліський район · Poliske

Out · last detection 4 Sept 2024, 23:56 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2024 in Poliske, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 416 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 49th largest in Kyiv Oblast since 2016 (of 128 with a page). Number 396 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.

Compare with…
Burnt area
416ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
3 Sept 2024 – 5 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
3 Sept
2024
Heat detections
16
in a single hotspot: 59 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Average daily power
152MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept5 Sept
4 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 2024 · 104 MW · 2 4 Sept 2024 · 199 MW · 14
3 Sept 4 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
40km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.4 mm on 12 Sept.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Poliske Поліський район 5,622 inhabitants · 23.5 km from the centre where it started
    416 ha reached on 3 Sept
    0.2 %

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

  • Mixed forest47 %
  • Other natural land35 %
  • Agricultural areas11 %
  • Coniferous forest6.5 %

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)
3 Sept 29.9 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
4 Sept 29.1 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Sept 27.8 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Sept after 26.2 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
7 Sept after 26.1 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Sept after 26.3 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
9 Sept after 26.6 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Sept after 25.5 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Sept after 26.3 °C 47 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
12 Sept after 26.2 °C 59 % 44 km/h 6.4 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Aug 2024
After · 12 Sept 2024

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 3 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM10117 µg/m³
Optical depth0.46
12345678
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 · 16Every 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 Poliske fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 3 September 2024 and 5 September 2024: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 416 hectares (4.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Poliske (416 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Poliske and came within 23.5 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 29.9 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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.

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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. 16 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.