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Seredyna-Buda fire, 8 April 2020 Середино-Будський район · Seredyna-Buda

Out · last detection 9 Apr 2020, 09:31 UTC

The fire started on 8 April 2020 in Seredyna-Buda, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 463 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 24th largest in Sumy Oblast since 2016 (of 129 with a page). Number 57 in Ukraine in 2020, of 132.

The power measured by the satellite is low (6.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Novhorod-Siverskyi · 2024Seredyna-Buda · 2020Novhorod-Siverskyi · 2024Novhorod-Siverskyi · 2025

Burnt area
463ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
8 Apr 2020 – 11 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
8 Apr
2020
Heat detections
7
in a single hotspot: 6 MW
Danger at start
14
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
10MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Apr11 Apr
9 Apr 2020

How it evolved, day by day

8 Apr 2020 · 10 MW · 4 9 Apr 2020 · 10 MW · 3
8 Apr 9 Apr

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
58km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.6 mm on 14 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. Seredyna-Buda Середино-Будський район 15,686 inhabitants · 34.1 km from the centre where it started
    463 ha reached on 8 Apr
    0.4 %

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 land60 %
  • Mixed forest30 %
  • Agricultural areas5.4 %
  • Broadleaved forest3.9 %

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)
8 Apr 15.7 °C 31 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
9 Apr 17.9 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
10 Apr 11.7 °C 31 % 45 km/h 1.0 mm Low 8
11 Apr 8.9 °C 37 % 58 km/h 2.9 mm Very low 2
12 Apr after 11.9 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
13 Apr after 19.6 °C 22 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
14 Apr after 13.3 °C 39 % 41 km/h 7.6 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Apr 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 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak17 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1024 µg/m³
67891011121314
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 · 7Every 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 Seredyna-Buda fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 8 April 2020 and 11 April 2020: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 463 hectares (4.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Seredyna-Buda (463 ha, 0.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Seredyna-Buda and came within 34.1 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 26 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, 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.

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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 7 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.

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.