How long did the Poliske fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 September 2024 to 10 September 2024 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 September 2024 to 9 September 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 4,505 hectares (45.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Narodychi (2,664 ha, 2.4 %); Poliske (1,845 ha, 1.1 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Poliske and came within 5.3 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 28.1 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very 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.

UA · Ukraine · 2024-09-05 → 2024-09-10

Poliske fire, 5 September 2024 Поліський район · Narodychi, Poliske

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2024, 11:31 UTC

The fire started on 5 September 2024 in Poliske, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 4,505 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Kyiv Oblast since 2016 (of 128 with a page). Number 8 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Narodychi · 2020 Narodychi · 2022 Poliske · 2022 Narodychi · 2022

Burnt area: 4,505ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 6days; 5 Sept 2024 – 10 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 5 Sept; 2024
Heat detections: 716; in a single hotspot: 403 MW
Danger at start: 38; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 4.0GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Sept10 Sept

Play back 10 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

5 Sept 6 Sept 7 Sept 8 Sept 9 Sept 10 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

28°high

42km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.9 mm on 12 Sept.

This area had burned before

95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,298 ha in 2020.

4,298 ha Narodychi fire, April 2020 45,987 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.8% of the area of London (45 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Narodychi Народицький район 9,501 inhabitants · 30.2 km from the centre

2,664 ha reached on 6 Sept

2.4 %
Poliske Поліський район 5,622 inhabitants · 5.3 km from the centre where it started

1,845 ha reached on 5 Sept

1.1 %

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

Mixed forest49 %
Other natural land36 %
Coniferous forest7.8 %
Agricultural areas6.2 %
Broadleaved forest0.7 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area0.17 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.17 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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 Sept	28.1 °C	34 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
6 Sept	26.6 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
7 Sept	26.5 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
8 Sept	26.7 °C	20 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
9 Sept	27.4 °C	20 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
10 Sept	26.2 °C	30 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
11 Sept after	27.1 °C	40 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
12 Sept after	26.2 °C	57 %	44 km/h	9.9 mm	Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Aug 2024

After · 17 Sept 2024

Before After

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 11 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak29 µg/m³

Days over the guideline2 days

PM10100 µg/m³

Optical depth0.60

WHO 15

3456789101112

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 · 716Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Poliske fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 September 2024 to 10 September 2024 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 September 2024 to 9 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 4,505 hectares (45.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Narodychi (2,664 ha, 2.4 %); Poliske (1,845 ha, 1.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Poliske and came within 5.3 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 28.1 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very 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 ›

ДСНС · State Emergency Service ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 9 September 2024 → 10 September 2024.

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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Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 September 2024 to 9 September 2024. 716 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 2025, 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.

Where it burned