Mongkol Borei fire, December 2025 Ou Chrov, Mongkol Borei, Bavel
The fire started on 25 December 2025 in Mongkol Borei, Cambodia, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,657 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.
It is the largest fire in Banteay Meanchey since 2016 (of 14 with a page). Number 3 in Cambodia in 2025, of 28.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 12,657ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 27days
- 25 Dec 2025 – 20 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 4
- districts
- Started on
- 25 Dec
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 362
- in a single hotspot: 63 MW
- Danger at start
- 23
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 97MW
- 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 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,932 ha in 2016, 2,174 ha in 2017, 4,574 ha in 2018, 3,401 ha in 2019, 1,132 ha in 2020, 330 ha in 2023, 2,904 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,001 ha that had burned before.
- 2,093 ha Ou Chrov fire, December 2019 3,093 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,848 ha Mongkol Borei fire, January 2018 2,824 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,703 ha Mongkol Borei fire, January 2016 2,036 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 690 ha Mongkol Borei fire, January 2016 3,472 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
5,670 ha reached on 25 Dec10 %
-
Mongkol Borei where it started4,703 ha reached on 26 Dec5.8 %
-
1,314 ha reached on 25 Dec1.4 %
-
1,043 ha reached on 29 Dec2.1 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 34 hectares of built-up land and about 4,700 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Dec | 33.9 °C | 37 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 26 Dec | 29.9 °C | 54 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 27 Dec | 30.7 °C | 49 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 28 Dec | 31.1 °C | 47 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 29 Dec | 31.9 °C | 41 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 30 Dec | 31.7 °C | 35 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 31 Dec | 32.1 °C | 37 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 1 Jan | 32.6 °C | 35 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 2 Jan | 31.6 °C | 43 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 3 Jan | 30.4 °C | 42 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 4 Jan | 30.5 °C | 42 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 5 Jan | 31.8 °C | 41 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 6 Jan | 30.9 °C | 46 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 7 Jan | 29.1 °C | 45 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 8 Jan | 28.0 °C | 41 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 9 Jan | 27.6 °C | 43 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 10 Jan | 28.5 °C | 37 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 11 Jan | 28.8 °C | 39 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 12 Jan | 30.3 °C | 39 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 13 Jan | 31.9 °C | 37 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 14 Jan | 32.7 °C | 40 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 15 Jan | 33.8 °C | 38 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 16 Jan | 33.4 °C | 43 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 17 Jan | 33.5 °C | 46 % | 20 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 24 |
| 18 Jan | 33.9 °C | 45 % | 25 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 25 |
| 19 Jan | 33.6 °C | 43 % | 20 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 25 |
| 20 Jan | 35.1 °C | 35 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 21 Jan after | 33.2 °C | 40 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 22 Jan after | 31.9 °C | 34 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 23 Jan after | 31.3 °C | 36 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 24 Jan after | 31.3 °C | 37 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 25 Jan after | 32.6 °C | 37 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 26 Jan after | 32.6 °C | 37 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 27 Jan after | 32.8 °C | 34 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 28 Jan after | 32.2 °C | 37 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 29 Jan after | 33.0 °C | 36 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 30 Jan after | 34.0 °C | 36 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 14 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 47 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 31: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 362Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,472 haMongkol Borei15 January 2016 · 22 days · 7 km away
- 3,093 haOu ChrovDecember 2019 · 19 days · 10 km away
- 5,549 haOu ChrovDecember 2024 · 22 days · 13 km away
- 3,773 haBavelDecember 2025 · 20 days · 13 km away
- 3,457 haBavelDecember 2018 · 19 days · 16 km away
- 2,941 haBavelJanuary 2025 · 15 days · 16 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mongkol Borei fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 December 2025 to 20 January 2026 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 December 2025 to 13 January 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,657 hectares (126.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 4 municipalities: Ou Chrov (5,670 ha, 10 %); Mongkol Borei (4,703 ha, 5.8 %); Bavel (1,314 ha, 1.4 %); Malai (1,043 ha, 2.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 13 January 2026 → 20 January 2026.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 December 2025 to 13 January 2026. 362 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.
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.