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Zarichne fire, 18 October 2021 Зарічненський район · Zarichne

Out · last detection 20 Oct 2021, 00:03 UTC

The fire started on 18 October 2021 in Zarichne, Ukraine, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 409 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

This entry is probably an agricultural burn of stubble, meadow or peatland, not a wildfire. Before the war, stubble and meadows in Ukraine were burnt every spring and autumn, and the fire often got out of hand. This is our assumption, based on the time of year, ground with almost no woodland and the lack of news about this fire; it is not confirmed. That is why it is left out of the wildfire rankings.

The power measured by the satellite is low (18.6 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: Zarichne · 2020Zarichne · 2021Zarichne · 2020Zarichne · 2020

Burnt area
409ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
18 Oct 2021 – 22 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
18 Oct
2021
Heat detections
10
in a single hotspot: 19 MW
Danger at start
5
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
20MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Oct22 Oct
20 Oct 2021

How it evolved, day by day

18 Oct 2021 · 4 MW · 3 19 Oct 2021 · 54 MW · 6 20 Oct 2021 · 2 MW · 1
18 Oct 19 Oct 20 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

18°high
61km/h · peak gust
44%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 355 ha in 2020.

What happened to each town

  1. Zarichne Зарічненський район 34,911 inhabitants · 11.5 km from the centre where it started
    409 ha reached on 18 Oct
    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

  • Other natural land96 %
  • Agricultural areas3.2 %
  • Mixed forest1.2 %

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)
18 Oct 10.4 °C 70 % 37 km/h 0.5 mm Very low 5
19 Oct 10.5 °C 45 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
20 Oct 14.1 °C 62 % 45 km/h 1.1 mm Very low 4
21 Oct 18.2 °C 44 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
22 Oct 15.3 °C 41 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
23 Oct after 8.3 °C 53 % 60 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 12
24 Oct after 7.0 °C 65 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
25 Oct after 10.8 °C 46 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
26 Oct after 12.9 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
27 Oct after 12.6 °C 62 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
28 Oct after 13.9 °C 74 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
29 Oct after 16.2 °C 58 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
30 Oct after 16.6 °C 50 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
31 Oct after 14.5 °C 54 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Oct 2021
After · 29 Oct 2021

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 27 October 2021 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1035 µg/m³
1617181920212223242526272829
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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ukraine ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Zarichne fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 October 2021 to 22 October 2021 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 October 2021 to 21 October 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 409 hectares (4.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Zarichne (409 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Zarichne and came within 11.5 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 18.2 °C, humidity dropped to 44 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 10, 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 ›

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 18 October 2021 to 21 October 2021. 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.
  • Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.

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.