Shakhtarsk fire, 29 August 2023 Шахтарський район · Shakhtarsk
The fire started on 29 August 2023 in Shakhtarsk, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 966 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 43th largest in Donetsk Oblast since 2016 (of 1004 with a page). Number 37 in Ukraine in 2023, of 491.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 966ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 29 Aug 2023 – 29 Aug 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 29 Aug
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 36
- in a single hotspot: 139 MW
- Danger at start
- 27
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 748MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
29 Aug 2023 · 748 MW · 36
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
10% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 101 ha in 2022.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Kyiv boundary: geoBoundaries · OpenStreetMap, Wambacher · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
963 ha reached on 29 Aug0.4 %
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
- Agricultural areas58 %
- Other natural land37 %
- Mixed forest4.9 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Aug | 25.4 °C | 31 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 30 Aug after | 26.0 °C | 24 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 31 Aug after | 29.5 °C | 19 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 1 Sept after | 31.8 °C | 27 % | 39 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 32 |
| 2 Sept after | 27.6 °C | 46 % | 35 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 26 |
| 3 Sept after | 27.7 °C | 38 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 4 Sept after | 28.4 °C | 35 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 5 Sept after | 23.2 °C | 46 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 6 Sept after | 26.7 °C | 30 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 7 Sept after | 24.3 °C | 33 % | 41 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 32 |
| 8 Sept after | 19.9 °C | 33 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 28 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 36Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,474 haShakhtarsk Шахтарський район26 July 2024 · 5 days · 5 km away
- 2,108 haShakhtarsk Шахтарський район2 September 2024 · 1 day · 10 km away
- 1,741 haShakhtarsk Шахтарський район22 July 2024 · 5 days · 12 km away
- 2,148 haAntratsyt Антрацитівський район9 September 2024 · 7 days · 26 km away
- 2,602 haAntratsyt Антрацитівський район10 July 2024 · 4 days · 33 km away
- 1,911 haAntratsyt Антрацитівський район7 July 2022 · 10 days · 34 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Shakhtarsk fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 29 August 2023 and 29 August 2023: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 966 hectares (9.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Shakhtarsk (963 ha, 0.4 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Shakhtarsk and came within 7.8 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 25.4 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class 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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 36 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.
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.