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Sarny fire, 6 March 2025 Сарненський район · Sarny

Out · last detection 9 Mar 2025, 10:16 UTC

The fire started on 6 March 2025 in Sarny, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 180 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 105th largest in Rivne Oblast since 2016 (of 167 with a page). Number 708 in Ukraine in 2025, of 1359.

Compare with…
Burnt area
180ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
6 Mar 2025 – 9 Mar 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
6 Mar
2025
Heat detections
9
in a single hotspot: 33 MW
Danger at start
7
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
43MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Mar9 Mar
9 Mar 2025

How it evolved, day by day

6 Mar 2025 · 23 MW · 3 8 Mar 2025 · 102 MW · 5 9 Mar 2025 · 4 MW · 1
6 Mar 8 Mar 9 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

18°high
48km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.3 mm on 12 Mar.

This area had burned before

51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 92 ha in 2020, 4 ha in 2021, 2 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 92 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Sarny Сарненський район 38.7 km from the centre where it started
    180 ha reached on 6 Mar
    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

  • Mixed forest41 %
  • Other natural land38 %
  • Agricultural areas15 %
  • Broadleaved forest6.1 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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)
6 Mar 17.9 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
7 Mar 17.7 °C 35 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
8 Mar 18.7 °C 25 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm Low 5
9 Mar 18.2 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
10 Mar after 18.0 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
11 Mar after 16.8 °C 45 % 52 km/h 0.3 mm Low 9
12 Mar after 15.8 °C 53 % 37 km/h 8.3 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Feb 2025
After · 16 Mar 2025

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 March 2025 the air beside the fire reached 31 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak31 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1034 µg/m³
Optical depth0.32
45678910
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 · 9Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 March 2025 to 9 March 2025 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 March 2025 to 7 March 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 180 hectares (1.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sarny (180 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Sarny and came within 38.7 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 17.9 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 7, class Low.
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
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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 6 March 2025 to 7 March 2025. 9 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.