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Seredyna-Buda fire, 28 August 2024 Середино-Будський район · Seredyna-Buda

Out · last detection 11 Sept 2024, 23:24 UTC

The fire started on 28 August 2024 in Seredyna-Buda, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,541 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2th largest in Sumy Oblast since 2016 (of 129 with a page). Number 26 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.

Compare with…
Burnt area
2,541ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
15days
28 Aug 2024 – 11 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
28 Aug
2024
Heat detections
177
in a single hotspot: 116 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
60MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Aug11 Sept
11 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

28 Aug 2024 · 3 MW · 1 31 Aug 2024 · 1 MW · 1 1 Sept 2024 · 24 MW · 10 2 Sept 2024 · 135 MW · 39 3 Sept 2024 · 310 MW · 30 4 Sept 2024 · 109 MW · 36 5 Sept 2024 · 29 MW · 20 6 Sept 2024 · 43 MW · 18 7 Sept 2024 · 45 MW · 11 8 Sept 2024 · 11 MW · 4 10 Sept 2024 · 4 MW · 5 11 Sept 2024 · 2 MW · 2
28 Aug 1 Sept 3 Sept 5 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
56km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (25 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Seredyna-Buda Середино-Будський район 15,686 inhabitants · 5.6 km from the centre where it started
    2,540 ha reached on 28 Aug
    2.2 %

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 forest50 %
  • Coniferous forest21 %
  • Broadleaved forest18 %
  • Other natural land6.8 %
  • Agricultural areas3.8 %

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 area0.34 ha
Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.34 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (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)
28 Aug 29.3 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
29 Aug 29.4 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
30 Aug 29.0 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
31 Aug 29.8 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
1 Sept 29.6 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
2 Sept 28.9 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Sept 28.9 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
4 Sept 26.9 °C 31 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Sept 24.5 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
6 Sept 23.4 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Sept 24.2 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
8 Sept 25.0 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
9 Sept 25.1 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
10 Sept 25.8 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Sept 26.4 °C 47 % 35 km/h 0.5 mm High 26
12 Sept after 28.8 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm High 36
13 Sept after 26.9 °C 31 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Sept after 27.2 °C 23 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Sept after 26.5 °C 23 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Sept after 25.9 °C 32 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
17 Sept after 24.7 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
18 Sept after 21.6 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Sept after 22.6 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Sept after 21.1 °C 48 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
21 Sept after 22.4 °C 44 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
22 Sept after 20.0 °C 43 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
23 Sept after 20.5 °C 41 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 22

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Aug 2024
After · 18 Sept 2024

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 12 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak26 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1099 µg/m³
Optical depth0.37
26272829303112345678910111213141516
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 · 177Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 August 2024 to 11 September 2024 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 August 2024 to 4 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,541 hectares (25.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Seredyna-Buda (2,540 ha, 2.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Seredyna-Buda and came within 5.6 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 29.8 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 31 August 2024 to 4 September 2024. 177 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.