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Shakhtarsk fire, 23 August 2022 Шахтарський район · Shakhtarsk

Out · last detection 23 Aug 2022, 10:33 UTC

The fire started on 23 August 2022 in Shakhtarsk, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,211 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 28th largest in Donetsk Oblast since 2016 (of 1004 with a page). Number 26 in Ukraine in 2022, of 531.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Shakhtarsk · 2024Shakhtarsk · 2024Shakhtarsk · 2024Antratsyt · 2024

Burnt area
1,211ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
23 Aug 2022 – 25 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
23 Aug
2022
Heat detections
60
in a single hotspot: 74 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.5GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Aug25 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

23 Aug 2022 · 1,457 MW · 60

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
61km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 29 Aug.

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 0.8% of the area of London (12 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. Shakhtarsk Шахтарський район 18,952 inhabitants · 7.0 km from the centre where it started
    1,205 ha reached on 23 Aug
    0.5 %

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 %
  • Agricultural areas26 %
  • Mixed forest16 %
  • Broadleaved forest1.6 %

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)
23 Aug 31.9 °C 24 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Aug 31.4 °C 18 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
25 Aug 31.7 °C 19 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
26 Aug after 31.5 °C 18 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
27 Aug after 31.2 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Aug after 32.9 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
29 Aug after 31.8 °C 37 % 42 km/h 2.1 mm Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Aug 2022
After · 1 Sept 2022

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 21 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM10188 µg/m³
Optical depth0.51
2122232425262728
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 · 60Every 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 Shakhtarsk fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 23 August 2022 and 25 August 2022: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,211 hectares (12.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Shakhtarsk (1,205 ha, 0.5 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Shakhtarsk and came within 7.0 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 31.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
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. 60 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.