Kaev Seima fire, February 2020 Kaev Seima, Ou Reang
The fire started on 10 February 2020 in Kaev Seima, Cambodia, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,963 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 51th largest in Mondulkiri since 2016 (of 112 with a page). Number 32 in Cambodia in 2020, of 73.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,963ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 26days
- 10 Feb 2020 – 6 Mar 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 10 Feb
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 216
- in a single hotspot: 31 MW
- Danger at start
- 25
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 47MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 451 ha in 2016, 987 ha in 2017, 972 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,128 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
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).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Kaev Seima where it started2,686 ha reached on 10 Feb1.0 %
-
294 ha reached on 20 Feb0.2 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.29 hectares of built-up land and about 100 residents (GHSL 2020, 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Feb | 34.2 °C | 44 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 17 Feb | 34.1 °C | 39 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 18 Feb | 33.5 °C | 37 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 19 Feb | 34.2 °C | 32 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 20 Feb | 33.5 °C | 33 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 21 Feb | 33.5 °C | 38 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 22 Feb | 33.8 °C | 35 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 23 Feb | 33.9 °C | 32 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 24 Feb | 34.1 °C | 35 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 25 Feb | 34.3 °C | 33 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 26 Feb | 35.1 °C | 33 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 27 Feb | 35.4 °C | 30 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 28 Feb | 35.1 °C | 30 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 29 Feb | 34.3 °C | 36 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 1 Mar | 34.0 °C | 43 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 2 Mar | 34.3 °C | 41 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 3 Mar | 34.3 °C | 42 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 4 Mar | 34.3 °C | 46 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 5 Mar | 36.0 °C | 39 % | 27 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 28 |
| 6 Mar | 33.0 °C | 49 % | 27 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 24 |
| 7 Mar after | 34.3 °C | 50 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 8 Mar after | 34.4 °C | 49 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 9 Mar after | 34.1 °C | 53 % | 29 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 26 |
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.
Detections table · 216Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 36,542 haSnuol14 January 2016 · 87 days · 8 km away
- 5,287 haKaev Seima18 February 2017 · 24 days · 8 km away
- 6,236 haKaev Seima4 February 2017 · 22 days · 14 km away
- 15,165 haKaev Seima10 January 2026 · 33 days · 17 km away
- 6,507 haKaev Seima14 January 2026 · 22 days · 21 km away
- 6,724 haKaev Seima14 January 2026 · 22 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kaev Seima fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 February 2020 to 6 March 2020 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 February 2020 to 28 February 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,963 hectares (29.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kaev Seima (2,686 ha, 1.0 %); Ou Reang (294 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 28 February 2020 → 6 March 2020.
- Start date: 16 February 2020 → 10 February 2020.
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: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 16 February 2020 to 28 February 2020. 216 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.