Svobodnensky District fire, 4 May 2016 Svobodnensky District, Shimanovsky District, Shimanovsk
The fire started on 4 May 2016 in Svobodnensky District, Russia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 114,176 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.
Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:
- 53,981 haSvobodnensky District7 May 2016 · 7 days
- 21,143 haShimanovsky District4 May 2016 · 11 days
- 14,457 haSvobodnensky District5 May 2016 · 6 days
- 7,728 haShimanovsky District7 May 2016 · 7 days
- 6,519 haShimanovsky District7 May 2016 · 8 days
- 4,657 haShimanovsky District4 May 2016 · 7 days
- 3,597 haSvobodnensky District4 May 2016 · 4 days
It is the 3th largest in Amur Oblast since 2016 (of 535 with a page). Number 2 in Russia in 2016, of 692.
- Burnt area
- 114,176ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 4 May 2016 – 14 May 2016
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- districts
- Started on
- 4 May
- 2016
- Heat detections
- 6,197
- in a single hotspot: 1,031 MW
- Danger at start
- 14
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 14.7GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
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 one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 18.3 mm on 15 May.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Moscow 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
-
Svobodnensky District where it started99,321 ha reached on 5 May14 %
-
14,496 ha reached on 4 May1.0 %
-
338 ha reached on 8 May7.5 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2015Inside the perimeter there were about 6.6 hectares of built-up land and about 350 residents (GHSL 2015, 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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 May | 18.6 °C | 10 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 5 May | 19.4 °C | 18 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 6 May | 15.9 °C | 27 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 7 May | 16.9 °C | 10 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 8 May | 18.6 °C | 12 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 9 May | 22.8 °C | 11 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 10 May | 24.2 °C | 12 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 11 May | 19.0 °C | 41 % | 58 km/h | 8.2 mm | Very low 2 |
| 12 May | 6.4 °C | 41 % | 49 km/h | 8.6 mm | Very low 0 |
| 13 May | 12.7 °C | 13 % | 72 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 14 May | 14.2 °C | 31 % | 53 km/h | 2.6 mm | Very low 2 |
| 15 May after | 8.6 °C | 92 % | 41 km/h | 18.3 mm | Very low 0 |
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.
Detections table · 6,197Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 21,143 haShimanovsky District4 May 2016 · 11 days · 14 km away
- 12,331 haShimanovsky District5 May 2023 · 3 days · 17 km away
- 10,654 haSvobodnensky DistrictMay 2023 · 9 days · 31 km away
- 10,084 haShimanovsky District2 April 2018 · 5 days · 32 km away
- 10,116 haSvobodnensky DistrictApril 2019 · 8 days · 34 km away
- 20,846 haSvobodnensky District10 May 2025 · 4 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Svobodnensky District fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 May 2016 to 14 May 2016 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 May 2016 to 14 May 2016.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 114,176 hectares (1,141.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Svobodnensky District (99,321 ha, 14 %); Shimanovsky District (14,496 ha, 1.0 %); Shimanovsk (338 ha, 7.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 24.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 72 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Russia (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: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 7 May 2016 → 4 May 2016.
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: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 May 2016 to 14 May 2016. 6,197 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 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. 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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.