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Popasna fire, 2 July 2026 Попаснянський район · Popasna

Out · last measured on 7 Jul 2026

The fire started on 2 July 2026 in Popasna, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 121 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 751th largest in Luhansk Oblast since 2016 (of 909 with a page). Number 790 in Ukraine in 2026, of 984.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Popasna · 2023Popasna · 2024Popasna · 2024Popasna · 2024

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but not yet its hotspots: NASA publishes the yearly hotspot archive only once the year closes. The page picks it up automatically when it is available.

Burnt area
121ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
6days
2 Jul 2026 – 7 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
2 Jul
2026

Where it burned

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 79 ha in 2023, 39 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 100 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Popasna Попаснянський район 40,204 inhabitants · 11.2 km from the centre where it started
    121 ha
    0.1 %

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

  • Other natural land68 %
  • Agricultural areas25 %
  • Mixed forest6.7 %

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

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Jun 2026
After · 14 Jul 2026

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 4 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 18 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak18 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1021 µg/m³
Optical depth0.85
3012345
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Popasna fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 July 2026 to 7 July 2026 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 July 2026 to 2 July 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 121 hectares (1.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Popasna (121 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Popasna and came within 11.2 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.
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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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 2 July 2026 to 2 July 2026. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.

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.