How long did the Moung Ruessei fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 February 2016 to 12 March 2016 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 February 2016 to 6 March 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,594 hectares (55.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Moung Ruessei (5,059 ha, 3.6 %); Sangkae (571 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 45 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.

KH · Cambodia · 2016-02-17 → 2016-03-12

Moung Ruessei fire, February 2016 Moung Ruessei, Sangkae

Out · last detection 12 Mar 2016, 18:50 UTC

The fire started on 17 February 2016 in Moung Ruessei, Cambodia, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,594 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 7th largest in Battambang since 2016 (of 31 with a page). Number 19 in Cambodia in 2016, of 118.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Moung Ruessei · 2024 Sangkae · 2016 Sangkae · 2024 Sangkae · 2019

Burnt area: 5,594ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 25days; 17 Feb 2016 – 12 Mar 2016
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 17 Feb; 2016
Heat detections: 294; in a single hotspot: 108 MW
Danger at start: 23; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 189MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Feb12 Mar

Play back 12 Mar 2016

How it evolved, day by day

17 Feb 20 Feb 24 Feb 25 Feb 28 Feb 2 Mar 5 Mar 10 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

39°high

45km/h · peak gust

36%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.5% of the area of London (56 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

Moung Ruessei where it started

5,059 ha reached on 17 Feb

3.6 %
Sangkae

571 ha reached on 24 Feb

0.5 %

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)
17 Feb	34.0 °C	41 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
18 Feb	33.6 °C	40 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
19 Feb	34.8 °C	38 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
20 Feb	34.0 °C	39 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
21 Feb	33.9 °C	39 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
22 Feb	35.9 °C	40 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
23 Feb	35.8 °C	42 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
24 Feb	34.4 °C	42 %	45 km/h	2.9 mm	Moderate 13
25 Feb	32.5 °C	42 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
26 Feb	33.6 °C	42 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
27 Feb	33.0 °C	40 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
28 Feb	34.0 °C	41 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
29 Feb	32.4 °C	43 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
1 Mar	32.3 °C	36 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
2 Mar	33.9 °C	36 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
3 Mar	34.2 °C	42 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
4 Mar	36.0 °C	40 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
5 Mar	36.6 °C	41 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
6 Mar	36.2 °C	48 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
7 Mar	36.8 °C	53 %	22 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 20
8 Mar	38.5 °C	40 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
9 Mar	38.4 °C	38 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
10 Mar	38.7 °C	40 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
11 Mar	37.0 °C	47 %	31 km/h	1.3 mm	Moderate 19
12 Mar	36.1 °C	47 %	22 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 18
13 Mar after	36.3 °C	46 %	24 km/h	0.1 mm	High 23
14 Mar after	38.6 °C	39 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
15 Mar after	37.7 °C	44 %	24 km/h	0.3 mm	High 28
16 Mar after	37.6 °C	46 %	26 km/h	0.6 mm	High 24
17 Mar after	39.8 °C	35 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
18 Mar after	39.0 °C	38 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
19 Mar after	39.5 °C	37 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
20 Mar after	40.0 °C	33 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
21 Mar after	39.9 °C	36 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
22 Mar after	39.6 °C	35 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Feb 2016

After · 19 Mar 2016

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.

Detections table · 294Every 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 Moung Ruessei fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 February 2016 to 12 March 2016 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 February 2016 to 6 March 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,594 hectares (55.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Moung Ruessei (5,059 ha, 3.6 %); Sangkae (571 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 45 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

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: 6 March 2016 → 12 March 2016.
27 October 2026 Start date: 24 February 2016 → 17 February 2016.

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?

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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 24 February 2016 to 6 March 2016. 294 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.

Where it burned