How long did the Starobesheve fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 1 April 2024 and 2 April 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 212 hectares (2.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Starobesheve (212 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 23.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, class Moderate.

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 · 2024-04-01 → 2024-04-02

Starobesheve fire, April 2024 Starobesheve

Out · last detection 1 Apr 2024, 10:27 UTC

The fire started on 1 April 2024 in Starobesheve, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 212 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 387th largest in Donetsk Oblast since 2016 (of 1004 with a page). Number 888 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.

The power measured by the satellite is low (9.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Starobesheve · 2022 Starobesheve · 2022 Marinka · 2025 Marinka · 2022

Burnt area: 212ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 2days; 1 Apr 2024 – 2 Apr 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 1 Apr; 2024
Heat detections: 10; in a single hotspot: 10 MW
Danger at start: 10; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 55MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Apr2 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

1 Apr 2024 · 55 MW · 10

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

The weather it burned in

24°high

48km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 112 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

Starobesheve where it started

212 ha reached on 1 Apr

0.2 %

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

Agricultural areas93 %
Mixed forest3.3 %
Other natural land1.9 %
Artificial surfaces1.4 %

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)
1 Apr	23.1 °C	26 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
2 Apr	23.6 °C	20 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
3 Apr after	17.0 °C	35 %	41 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 12
4 Apr after	19.9 °C	21 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
5 Apr after	12.7 °C	39 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
6 Apr after	17.7 °C	27 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
7 Apr after	21.2 °C	30 %	18 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 10
8 Apr after	23.8 °C	24 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
9 Apr after	24.1 °C	27 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
10 Apr after	25.1 °C	27 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
11 Apr after	26.8 °C	22 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
12 Apr after	26.9 °C	22 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Mar 2024

After · 9 Apr 2024

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 2 April 2024 the air beside the fire reached 56 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak56 µg/m³

Days over the guideline7 days

PM1078 µg/m³

Optical depth0.60

WHO 15

3031123456789101112

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 · 10Every 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 Starobesheve fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 1 April 2024 and 2 April 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 212 hectares (2.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Starobesheve (212 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 23.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, class Moderate.
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.

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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?

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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.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 10 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