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Sarny fire, 21 October 2021 Сарненський район · Sarny

Out · last detection 23 Oct 2021, 00:47 UTC

The fire started on 21 October 2021 in Sarny, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 270 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 80th largest in Rivne Oblast since 2016 (of 167 with a page). Number 10 in Ukraine in 2021, of 18.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sarny · 2020Sarny · 2025Sarny · 2021Sarny · 2021

Burnt area
270ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
21 Oct 2021 – 23 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
21 Oct
2021
Heat detections
17
in a single hotspot: 39 MW
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
69MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Oct23 Oct
23 Oct 2021

How it evolved, day by day

21 Oct 2021 · 194 MW · 12 22 Oct 2021 · 12 MW · 4 23 Oct 2021 · 1 MW · 1
21 Oct 22 Oct 23 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

19°high
59km/h · peak gust
37%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

34% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 92 ha in 2020.

What happened to each town

  1. Sarny Сарненський район 40.6 km from the centre where it started
    270 ha reached on 21 Oct
    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 land56 %
  • Mixed forest34 %
  • Broadleaved forest5.6 %
  • Coniferous forest4.1 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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 Oct 19.0 °C 39 % 56 km/h 0.7 mm Low 10
22 Oct 14.0 °C 37 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
23 Oct 9.0 °C 54 % 58 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 11
24 Oct after 6.7 °C 63 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
25 Oct after 10.4 °C 47 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
26 Oct after 12.9 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
27 Oct after 11.5 °C 64 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
28 Oct after 13.5 °C 74 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Low 5
29 Oct after 15.9 °C 56 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
30 Oct after 16.1 °C 51 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
31 Oct after 14.1 °C 48 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
1 Nov after 11.9 °C 60 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
2 Nov after 8.7 °C 81 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Oct 2021
After · 30 Oct 2021

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 20 October 2021 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
PM1022 µg/m³
1920212223242526
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 · 17Every 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 21 October 2021 and 23 October 2021: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 270 hectares (2.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sarny (270 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Sarny and came within 40.6 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 19.0 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 12, 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 · 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 17 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 2020, 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.