Skip to content
worldfires
en
UA · Ukraine · →

Starobesheve fire, August 2024 Starobesheve

Out · last measured on 5 Aug 2024

The fire started on 3 August 2024 in Starobesheve, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 208 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 401th largest in Donetsk Oblast since 2016 (of 1004 with a page). Number 912 in Ukraine in 2024, of 2092.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Boikivske · 2023Boikivske · 2025Volnovakha · 2022Boikivske · 2023

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
208ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
3 Aug 2024 – 5 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
3 Aug
2024
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

32°high
37km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

32% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 66 ha in 2023.

What happened to each town

  1. Starobesheve where it started
    207 ha
    0.1 %

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 areas53 %
  • Other natural land46 %
  • Artificial surfaces1.0 %

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)
3 Aug 32.2 °C 25 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Aug 30.1 °C 51 % 37 km/h 3.2 mm Low 9
5 Aug 26.2 °C 60 % 32 km/h 4.8 mm Very low 4
6 Aug after 26.4 °C 56 % 23 km/h 0.7 mm Low 6
7 Aug after 28.1 °C 41 % 22 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14
8 Aug after 29.7 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Aug after 30.2 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
10 Aug after 31.6 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
11 Aug after 31.7 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Aug after 27.8 °C 25 % 50 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 39
13 Aug after 26.9 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Aug after 27.3 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Aug after 27.0 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Jul 2024
After · 12 Aug 2024

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 7 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 41 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak41 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1048 µg/m³
Optical depth0.56
12345678
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Starobesheve fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 3 August 2024 and 5 August 2024: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 208 hectares (2.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Starobesheve (207 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.2 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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.

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. No 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.