How long did the Chhaeb fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 February 2026 and 20 February 2026: 15 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,399 hectares (54.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Chhaeb (5,436 ha, 2.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cambodia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

KH · Cambodia · 2026-02-06 → 2026-02-20

Chhaeb fire, 6 February 2026 Chhaeb

Out · last detection 20 Feb 2026, 06:22 UTC

The fire started on 6 February 2026 in Chhaeb, Cambodia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,399 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 14th largest in Preah Vihear since 2016 (of 97 with a page). Number 26 in Cambodia in 2026, of 120.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chhaeb · 2026 Chhaeb · 2017 Thala Barivat · 2022 Chhaeb · 2026

Burnt area: 5,399ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 6 Feb 2026 – 20 Feb 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 6 Feb; 2026
Heat detections: 165; in a single hotspot: 67 MW
Danger at start: 25; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 92MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Feb20 Feb

Play back 20 Feb 2026

How it evolved, day by day

6 Feb 10 Feb 12 Feb 14 Feb 16 Feb 18 Feb 19 Feb 20 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

37km/h · peak gust

29%lowest humidity

It had gone 45 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 16.4 mm on 27 Feb.

This area had burned before

47% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 58 ha in 2017, 12 ha in 2019, 1,396 ha in 2020, 844 ha in 2021, 6 ha in 2023, 1,570 ha in 2024, 224 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,538 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (54 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Chhaeb where it started

5,436 ha

2.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
6 Feb	35.1 °C	37 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
7 Feb	32.9 °C	52 %	26 km/h	0.5 mm	High 22
8 Feb	31.8 °C	46 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
9 Feb	33.8 °C	34 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
10 Feb	34.3 °C	33 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
11 Feb	34.7 °C	42 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
12 Feb	35.1 °C	37 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
13 Feb	36.0 °C	33 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
14 Feb	36.0 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
15 Feb	36.7 °C	31 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
16 Feb	36.9 °C	29 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
17 Feb	36.6 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
18 Feb	36.3 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
19 Feb	35.2 °C	35 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
20 Feb	35.5 °C	35 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
21 Feb after	35.7 °C	33 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Feb after	36.7 °C	34 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
23 Feb after	35.0 °C	47 %	29 km/h	0.1 mm	High 28
24 Feb after	36.7 °C	39 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
25 Feb after	35.6 °C	41 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
26 Feb after	35.5 °C	44 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
27 Feb after	27.5 °C	70 %	20 km/h	16.4 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Jan 2026

After · 27 Feb 2026

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 10 February 2026 the air beside the fire reached 124 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 46: 3.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak124 µg/m³

Days over the guideline16 days

PM10126 µg/m³

Optical depth1.26

WHO 15

4567891011121314151617181920212223

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 · 165Every 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 Cambodia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chhaeb fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 February 2026 and 20 February 2026: 15 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,399 hectares (54.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Chhaeb (5,436 ha, 2.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cambodia (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.

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · 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?

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What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 165 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.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. 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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.

Where it burned