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Sambour fire, February 2018 Sambour

Out · last detection 30 Mar 2018, 18:24 UTC

The fire started on 20 February 2018 in Sambour, Cambodia, and satellites saw it burning for 38 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,714 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 48th largest in Kratie since 2016 (of 80 with a page). Number 16 in Cambodia in 2018, of 22.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sambour · 2017Sambour · 2021Sambour · 2026Sambour · 2020

Burnt area
2,714ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
38days
20 Feb 2018 – 29 Mar 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
20 Feb
2018
Heat detections
530
in a single hotspot: 47 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
69MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Feb29 Mar
30 Mar 2018

How it evolved, day by day

20 Feb 2018 · 60 MW · 15 21 Feb 2018 · 23 MW · 8 22 Feb 2018 · 7 MW · 1 23 Feb 2018 · 79 MW · 9 24 Feb 2018 · 28 MW · 8 25 Feb 2018 · 109 MW · 23 26 Feb 2018 · 215 MW · 34 27 Feb 2018 · 140 MW · 25 28 Feb 2018 · 34 MW · 9 1 Mar 2018 · 9 MW · 5 2 Mar 2018 · 25 MW · 8 3 Mar 2018 · 17 MW · 5 4 Mar 2018 · 54 MW · 10 5 Mar 2018 · 33 MW · 8 6 Mar 2018 · 30 MW · 6 7 Mar 2018 · 127 MW · 21 8 Mar 2018 · 24 MW · 11 9 Mar 2018 · 354 MW · 39 10 Mar 2018 · 279 MW · 41 11 Mar 2018 · 105 MW · 23 12 Mar 2018 · 131 MW · 18 13 Mar 2018 · 35 MW · 11 14 Mar 2018 · 41 MW · 6 15 Mar 2018 · 2 MW · 1 16 Mar 2018 · 33 MW · 12 17 Mar 2018 · 9 MW · 2 18 Mar 2018 · 22 MW · 3 19 Mar 2018 · 57 MW · 12 20 Mar 2018 · 28 MW · 2 22 Mar 2018 · 13 MW · 4 23 Mar 2018 · 85 MW · 21 24 Mar 2018 · 88 MW · 24 25 Mar 2018 · 88 MW · 17 26 Mar 2018 · 110 MW · 20 27 Mar 2018 · 117 MW · 25 28 Mar 2018 · 3 MW · 2 29 Mar 2018 · 3 MW · 3 30 Mar 2018 · 1 MW · 1
20 Feb 26 Feb 4 Mar 9 Mar 10 Mar 16 Mar 23 Mar 29 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
53km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.2 mm on 3 Apr.

This area had burned before

60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 500 ha in 2016, 1,561 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,624 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (27 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

  1. Sambour where it started
    2,728 ha
    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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
20 Feb 36.5 °C 33 % 21 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
21 Feb 35.7 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
22 Feb 36.7 °C 36 % 32 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 20
23 Feb 35.3 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 23
24 Feb 37.5 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Feb 37.5 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Feb 36.3 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
27 Feb 36.9 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Feb 36.1 °C 40 % 24 km/h 0.5 mm High 30
1 Mar 35.4 °C 45 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
2 Mar 33.6 °C 50 % 23 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
3 Mar 35.5 °C 44 % 29 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
4 Mar 36.5 °C 44 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm High 23
5 Mar 36.2 °C 45 % 26 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
6 Mar 35.6 °C 41 % 23 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
7 Mar 37.1 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Mar 38.4 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Mar 34.9 °C 38 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Mar 34.8 °C 34 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Mar 35.2 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Mar 36.3 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Mar 36.2 °C 38 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Mar 34.2 °C 49 % 32 km/h 0.6 mm High 27
15 Mar 35.3 °C 44 % 26 km/h 4.0 mm Low 8
16 Mar 32.9 °C 61 % 29 km/h 8.8 mm Very low 3
17 Mar 34.1 °C 53 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm Low 8
18 Mar 34.7 °C 52 % 22 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 13
19 Mar 34.9 °C 49 % 24 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 15
20 Mar 35.0 °C 48 % 24 km/h 4.9 mm Very low 4
21 Mar 25.8 °C 92 % 19 km/h 42.3 mm Very low 0
22 Mar 33.2 °C 53 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
23 Mar 32.8 °C 46 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
24 Mar 33.1 °C 44 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
25 Mar 34.9 °C 40 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
26 Mar 34.2 °C 43 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
27 Mar 33.0 °C 46 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
28 Mar 33.2 °C 52 % 21 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 14
29 Mar 30.8 °C 64 % 25 km/h 2.4 mm Very low 3
30 Mar after 33.8 °C 54 % 18 km/h 0.5 mm Low 6
31 Mar after 33.4 °C 47 % 24 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 12
1 Apr after 34.3 °C 41 % 29 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 14
2 Apr after 34.7 °C 45 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
3 Apr after 33.0 °C 55 % 24 km/h 3.2 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Feb 2018
After · 5 Apr 2018

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 · 530Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Cambodia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sambour fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 February 2018 and 29 March 2018: 38 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,714 hectares (27.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sambour (2,728 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.4 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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 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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 530 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.

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.