Popasna fire, 21 May 2024 Попаснянський район · Popasna
The fire started on 21 May 2024 in Popasna, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 330 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 271th largest in Luhansk Oblast since 2016 (of 909 with a page). Number 524 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.
The power measured by the satellite is low (13.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
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- Burnt area
- 330ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 21 May 2024 – 22 May 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 21 May
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 3
- in a single hotspot: 13 MW
- Danger at start
- 22
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 10MW
- 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 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.6 mm on 31 May.
This area had burned before
30% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 98 ha in 2022.
What happened to each town
-
329 ha reached on 21 May0.2 %
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 land85 %
- Mixed forest11 %
- Agricultural areas4.2 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 May | 25.7 °C | 27 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 22 May | 27.4 °C | 21 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 23 May after | 28.2 °C | 18 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 24 May after | 23.4 °C | 16 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 25 May after | 22.8 °C | 20 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 26 May after | 23.4 °C | 21 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 27 May after | 25.9 °C | 22 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 28 May after | 27.6 °C | 23 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 29 May after | 27.0 °C | 21 % | 49 km/h | 0.8 mm | Very high 40 |
| 30 May after | 27.3 °C | 40 % | 24 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 25 |
| 31 May after | 25.4 °C | 52 % | 26 km/h | 4.6 mm | Very low 4 |
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 22 May 2024 the air beside the fire reached 24 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 · 3Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 12,789 haNovoaidar Новоайдарський районSeptember 2020 · 5 days · 21 km away
- 6,751 haPopasna Попаснянський район15 September 2024 · 5 days · 23 km away
- 4,004 haSlovianoserbsk Слов'яносербський район27 July 2025 · 5 days · 23 km away
- 3,888 haSlovianoserbsk Слов'яносербський районMay 2024 · 12 days · 23 km away
- 7,135 haNovoaidar Новоайдарський район6 July 2020 · 5 days · 26 km away
- 4,817 haPerevalsk Перевальський район4 July 2025 · 8 days · 26 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Popasna fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 21 May 2024 and 22 May 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 330 hectares (3.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Popasna (329 ha, 0.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Popasna and came within 10.4 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 27.4 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 24 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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.
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. 3 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.
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.