Vitovka fire, 2 September 2023 Vitovka, Bilozerka
The fire started on 2 September 2023 in Vitovka, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 657 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 21th largest in Mykolaiv Oblast since 2016 (of 115 with a page). Number 56 in Ukraine in 2023, of 491.
The power measured by the satellite is low (11.8 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…
- Burnt area
- 657ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 6days
- 2 Sept 2023 – 7 Sept 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 2 Sept
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 14
- in a single hotspot: 12 MW
- Danger at start
- 31
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 22MW
- 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 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 14 Sept.
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).
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
-
Vitovka where it started600 ha reached on 2 Sept0.4 %
-
55 ha0.0 %
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
- Agricultural areas78 %
- Other natural land22 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Sept | 28.8 °C | 31 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 3 Sept | 29.4 °C | 27 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 4 Sept | 28.6 °C | 32 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 5 Sept | 28.7 °C | 34 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 6 Sept | 28.3 °C | 35 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 7 Sept | 27.9 °C | 32 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 8 Sept after | 25.0 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 9 Sept after | 26.2 °C | 28 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 10 Sept after | 22.2 °C | 29 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 11 Sept after | 24.2 °C | 35 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 12 Sept after | 26.2 °C | 33 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 13 Sept after | 26.5 °C | 37 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 14 Sept after | 24.6 °C | 60 % | 40 km/h | 1.1 mm | Moderate 17 |
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 5 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 16 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 · 14Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,881 haHolo Prystan Скадовський район7 July 2024 · 6 days · 26 km away
- 6,113 haHolo Prystan Скадовський районApril 2022 · 7 days · 27 km away
- 2,154 haHolo Prystan Скадовський район9 August 2022 · 2 days · 27 km away
- 3,083 haHolo Prystan Скадовський район6 August 2025 · 11 days · 30 km away
- 2,323 haHolo Prystan Скадовський район6 July 2023 · 6 days · 33 km away
- 2,302 haHolo Prystan Скадовський район19 March 2022 · 3 days · 34 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Vitovka fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 September 2023 to 7 September 2023 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2023 to 5 September 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 657 hectares (6.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Vitovka (600 ha, 0.4 %); Bilozerka (55 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 16.9 km of the centre of Bilozerka, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 September 2023 to 5 September 2023. 14 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.