How long did the Sambour fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 February 2017 to 19 March 2017 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 February 2017 to 14 March 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,777 hectares (97.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sambour (6,038 ha, 1.1 %); Prek Prasab (3,793 ha, 2.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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.

KH · Cambodia · 2017-02-17 → 2017-03-19

Sambour fire, 17 February 2017 Sambour, Prek Prasab

Out · last detection 19 Mar 2017, 06:40 UTC

The fire started on 17 February 2017 in Sambour, Cambodia, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,777 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 12th largest in Kratie since 2016 (of 80 with a page). Number 4 in Cambodia in 2017, of 60.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Prek Prasab · 2016 Sambour · 2016 Prek Prasab · 2016 Sambour · 2021

Burnt area: 9,777ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 31days; 17 Feb 2017 – 19 Mar 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 17 Feb; 2017
Heat detections: 588; in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 106MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Feb19 Mar

Play back 19 Mar 2017

How it evolved, day by day

17 Feb 22 Feb 27 Feb 28 Feb 5 Mar 10 Mar 15 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

38°high

49km/h · peak gust

27%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.9 mm on 15 Mar.

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,020 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.2% of the area of London (98 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

Sambour where it started

6,038 ha reached on 17 Feb

1.1 %
Prek Prasab

3,793 ha reached on 17 Feb

2.7 %

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 area0.16 ha

Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.16 hectares of built-up land and about 50 residents (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)
24 Feb	37.5 °C	29 %	30 km/h	0.3 mm	High 30
25 Feb	36.5 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Feb	35.8 °C	35 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
27 Feb	36.1 °C	35 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
28 Feb	36.3 °C	30 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
1 Mar	35.2 °C	32 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
2 Mar	35.4 °C	29 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
3 Mar	35.7 °C	27 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
4 Mar	35.7 °C	28 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
5 Mar	35.7 °C	34 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
6 Mar	35.7 °C	37 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
7 Mar	35.5 °C	37 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
8 Mar	36.1 °C	29 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
9 Mar	35.1 °C	33 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
10 Mar	36.9 °C	32 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
11 Mar	37.0 °C	34 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
12 Mar	35.6 °C	42 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
13 Mar	36.6 °C	43 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
14 Mar	37.1 °C	41 %	32 km/h	10.3 mm	Low 8
15 Mar	36.1 °C	46 %	28 km/h	3.9 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Feb 2017

After · 26 Mar 2017

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 · 588Every 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 Sambour fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 February 2017 to 19 March 2017 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 February 2017 to 14 March 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,777 hectares (97.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sambour (6,038 ha, 1.1 %); Prek Prasab (3,793 ha, 2.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 24 February 2017 to 14 March 2017. 588 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