How long did the Sovietsky fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 17 March 2025 and 17 March 2025: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 138 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Sovietsky (36 ha, 0.0 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Sovietsky and came within 3.5 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 13.3 °C, humidity dropped to 62 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 6, class Low.

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.

UA · Ukraine · 2025-03-17 → 2025-03-17

Sovietsky fire, March 2025 Совєтський район · Sovietsky

Out · last detection 17 Mar 2025, 11:04 UTC

The fire started on 17 March 2025 in Sovietsky, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 138 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 79th largest in Autonomous Republic of Crimea since 2016 (of 100 with a page). Number 967 in Ukraine in 2025, of 1359.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sovietsky · 2024 Nyzhniohirskyi · 2024 Bilohirsk · 2025 Kirovske · 2025

Burnt area: 138ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 1day; 17 Mar 2025 – 17 Mar 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 17 Mar; 2025
Heat detections: 7; in a single hotspot: 101 MW
Danger at start: 6; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 259MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Mar17 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

17 Mar 2025 · 259 MW · 7

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

The weather it burned in

13°high

32km/h · peak gust

62%lowest humidity

It had gone 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 18 Mar.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

Sovietsky Совєтський район 30,924 inhabitants · 3.5 km from the centre where it started

36 ha reached on 17 Mar

0.0 %

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 land cover80 %
Other natural land19 %
Mixed forest0.7 %

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)
17 Mar	13.3 °C	62 %	32 km/h	0.4 mm	Low 6
18 Mar after	7.5 °C	54 %	48 km/h	1.0 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Mar 2025

After · 24 Mar 2025

Before After

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 16 March 2025 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1041 µg/m³

Optical depth0.68

WHO 15

151617181920

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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sovietsky fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 17 March 2025 and 17 March 2025: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 138 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Sovietsky (36 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Sovietsky and came within 3.5 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 13.3 °C, humidity dropped to 62 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 6, class Low.
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 ›

ДСНС · State Emergency Service ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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.

Where it burned