How long did the Kaev Seima fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 January 2026 to 4 February 2026 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 January 2026 to 28 January 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,956 hectares (29.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kaev Seima (2,977 ha, 1.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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 · 2026-01-13 → 2026-02-04

Kaev Seima fire, 13 January 2026 Kaev Seima

Out · last detection 4 Feb 2026, 06:21 UTC

The fire started on 13 January 2026 in Kaev Seima, Cambodia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,956 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 52th largest in Mondulkiri since 2016 (of 112 with a page). Number 57 in Cambodia in 2026, of 118.

The power measured by the satellite is low (14.8 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…

Suggestions: Kaev Seima · 2023 Kaev Seima · 2026 Pech Chreada · 2016 Chetr Borei · 2021

Burnt area: 2,956ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 13 Jan 2026 – 4 Feb 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 13 Jan; 2026
Heat detections: 67; in a single hotspot: 15 MW
Danger at start: 21; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 25MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Jan4 Feb

Play back 4 Feb 2026

How it evolved, day by day

13 Jan 16 Jan 21 Jan 24 Jan 31 Jan 4 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

33°high

51km/h · peak gust

32%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 325 ha in 2016, 28 ha in 2023, 732 ha in 2024, 188 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,166 ha that had burned before.

28 ha Kaev Seima fire, December 2023 3,340 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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

Kaev Seima where it started

2,977 ha reached on 13 Jan

1.0 %

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)
19 Jan	33.2 °C	34 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
20 Jan	32.5 °C	36 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
21 Jan	32.3 °C	32 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
22 Jan	32.0 °C	35 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
23 Jan	31.6 °C	34 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
24 Jan	32.6 °C	35 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
25 Jan	32.9 °C	32 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
26 Jan	33.0 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
27 Jan	33.0 °C	34 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
28 Jan	32.4 °C	37 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
29 Jan	33.8 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
30 Jan	33.3 °C	37 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
31 Jan	33.0 °C	37 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
1 Feb	33.2 °C	30 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
2 Feb	33.1 °C	36 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
3 Feb	32.4 °C	44 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
4 Feb	34.1 °C	37 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
5 Feb after	34.6 °C	39 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
6 Feb after	33.8 °C	43 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
7 Feb after	33.1 °C	47 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	High 27

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Jan 2026

After · 11 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 25 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 38 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak38 µg/m³

Days over the guideline7 days

PM1040 µg/m³

Optical depth0.74

WHO 15

171819202122232425262728293031

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 · 67Every 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 Kaev Seima fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 January 2026 to 4 February 2026 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 January 2026 to 28 January 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,956 hectares (29.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kaev Seima (2,977 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 28 January 2026 → 4 February 2026.
27 October 2026 Start date: 19 January 2026 → 13 January 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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 19 January 2026 to 28 January 2026. 67 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