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Sarny fire, 6 April 2020 Сарненський район · Sarny

Out · last detection 8 Apr 2020, 11:30 UTC

The fire started on 6 April 2020 in Sarny, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,322 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 11th largest in Rivne Oblast since 2016 (of 167 with a page). Number 29 in Ukraine in 2020, of 132.

Burnt area
1,322ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
6days
6 Apr 2020 – 11 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
6 Apr
2020
Heat detections
50
in a single hotspot: 109 MW
Danger at start
9
Low · FWI index
Energy released
915MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 Apr 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Apr11 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

678

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

The weather it burned in

21°high
51km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 13 Apr.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Sarny Сарненський район 30.6 km from the town where it started
    1,323 ha reached on 6 Apr
    0.6 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Other natural land67 %
  • Mixed forest26 %
  • Agricultural areas5.9 %
  • Broadleaved forest0.6 %

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)
6 Apr 13.7 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
7 Apr 18.2 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
8 Apr 17.4 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
9 Apr 21.2 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
10 Apr 11.8 °C 27 % 51 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 17
11 Apr 11.6 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
12 Apr after 13.8 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
13 Apr after 21.2 °C 30 % 61 km/h 2.1 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Mar 2020
After · 18 Apr 2020

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 8 April 2020 the air beside the fire reached 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak25 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1029 µg/m³
4567891011121314
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 · 50Every 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 Sarny fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 6 April 2020 and 11 April 2020: 6 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,322 hectares (13.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sarny (1,323 ha, 0.6 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 30.6 km of Sarny. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 21.2 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.
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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.