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Kaev Seima fire, 6 February 2017 Snuol, Kaev Seima

Out · last detection 19 Feb 2017, 07:06 UTC

The fire started on 6 February 2017 in Kaev Seima, Cambodia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,236 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 15th largest in Mondulkiri since 2016 (of 112 with a page). Number 8 in Cambodia in 2017, of 60.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Snuol · 2016Kaev Seima · 2026Kaev Seima · 2017Kaev Seima · 2026

Burnt area
6,236ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
6 Feb 2017 – 18 Feb 2017
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
6 Feb
2017
Heat detections
333
in a single hotspot: 60 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
202MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Feb18 Feb
19 Feb 2017

How it evolved, day by day

6 Feb 2017 · 55 MW · 11 7 Feb 2017 · 116 MW · 20 8 Feb 2017 · 14 MW · 5 9 Feb 2017 · 215 MW · 30 10 Feb 2017 · 151 MW · 27 11 Feb 2017 · 433 MW · 56 12 Feb 2017 · 621 MW · 52 13 Feb 2017 · 303 MW · 38 14 Feb 2017 · 211 MW · 12 15 Feb 2017 · 471 MW · 31 16 Feb 2017 · 102 MW · 22 17 Feb 2017 · 2 MW · 2 18 Feb 2017 · 69 MW · 8 19 Feb 2017 · 70 MW · 8
6 Feb 8 Feb 10 Feb 12 Feb 14 Feb 16 Feb 18 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
56km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 21 Feb.

This area had burned before

43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,086 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,701 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (62 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

  1. Snuol
    3,257 ha
    1.2 %
  2. Kaev Seima where it started
    3,016 ha
    1.1 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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.

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 35.2 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 20
7 Feb 35.2 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
8 Feb 35.8 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
9 Feb 36.9 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
10 Feb 35.6 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Feb 34.3 °C 30 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Feb 33.4 °C 28 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Feb 34.2 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Feb 35.0 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Feb 34.3 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Feb 35.1 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Feb 35.4 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Feb 36.2 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Feb after 35.9 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Feb after 35.1 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
21 Feb after 36.3 °C 40 % 26 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jan 2017
After · 25 Feb 2017

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 333Every 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 Cambodia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kaev Seima fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 February 2017 and 18 February 2017: 13 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 6,236 hectares (62.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Snuol (3,257 ha, 1.2 %); Kaev Seima (3,016 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 56 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

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 333 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 2015, 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.