Skip to content
worldfires
en
KH · Cambodia · →

Sambour fire, 7 February 2021 Sambour, Santuk, Prek Prasab

Out · last detection 2 Apr 2021, 05:43 UTC

The fire started on 7 February 2021 in Sambour, Cambodia, and satellites saw it burning for 55 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 23,495 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the 2th largest in Kratie since 2016 (of 80 with a page). The largest in Cambodia in 2021, of 71.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sambour · 2020Sambour · 2016Sambour · 2017Sambour · 2016

Burnt area
23,495ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
55days
7 Feb 2021 – 2 Apr 2021
Municipalities hit
3
districts
Started on
7 Feb
2021
Heat detections
2,541
in a single hotspot: 222 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
358MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Feb2 Apr
2 Apr 2021

How it evolved, day by day

7 Feb 2021 · 187 MW · 26 8 Feb 2021 · 140 MW · 29 9 Feb 2021 · 1 MW · 1 10 Feb 2021 · 60 MW · 2 11 Feb 2021 · 131 MW · 15 12 Feb 2021 · 311 MW · 57 13 Feb 2021 · 47 MW · 10 14 Feb 2021 · 18 MW · 4 15 Feb 2021 · 57 MW · 7 16 Feb 2021 · 94 MW · 18 17 Feb 2021 · 1,115 MW · 193 18 Feb 2021 · 1,817 MW · 271 19 Feb 2021 · 1,060 MW · 163 20 Feb 2021 · 1,272 MW · 144 21 Feb 2021 · 1,351 MW · 89 22 Feb 2021 · 166 MW · 26 23 Feb 2021 · 351 MW · 23 24 Feb 2021 · 78 MW · 23 25 Feb 2021 · 305 MW · 38 26 Feb 2021 · 115 MW · 22 27 Feb 2021 · 204 MW · 46 28 Feb 2021 · 23 MW · 9 1 Mar 2021 · 70 MW · 9 2 Mar 2021 · 116 MW · 13 3 Mar 2021 · 166 MW · 30 4 Mar 2021 · 676 MW · 81 5 Mar 2021 · 175 MW · 52 6 Mar 2021 · 369 MW · 70 7 Mar 2021 · 274 MW · 34 8 Mar 2021 · 443 MW · 88 9 Mar 2021 · 455 MW · 75 10 Mar 2021 · 645 MW · 86 11 Mar 2021 · 2,048 MW · 105 12 Mar 2021 · 350 MW · 71 13 Mar 2021 · 866 MW · 114 14 Mar 2021 · 772 MW · 69 15 Mar 2021 · 84 MW · 18 16 Mar 2021 · 107 MW · 19 17 Mar 2021 · 84 MW · 16 18 Mar 2021 · 23 MW · 8 19 Mar 2021 · 37 MW · 3 20 Mar 2021 · 5 MW · 3 21 Mar 2021 · 5 MW · 7 22 Mar 2021 · 1,394 MW · 154 23 Mar 2021 · 284 MW · 42 24 Mar 2021 · 37 MW · 13 25 Mar 2021 · 319 MW · 22 26 Mar 2021 · 314 MW · 17 27 Mar 2021 · 82 MW · 16 28 Mar 2021 · 26 MW · 10 29 Mar 2021 · 137 MW · 21 30 Mar 2021 · 126 MW · 17 31 Mar 2021 · 111 MW · 18 1 Apr 2021 · 117 MW · 18 2 Apr 2021 · 84 MW · 6
7 Feb 15 Feb 23 Feb 3 Mar 11 Mar 19 Mar 27 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
54km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 8 Apr.

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 15,636 ha in 2016, 4,545 ha in 2017, 1,444 ha in 2018, 2,094 ha in 2019, 16,113 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 20,580 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 15% of the area of London (235 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
    21,754 ha reached on 7 Feb
    4.0 %
  2. Santuk
    946 ha reached on 8 Feb
    0.4 %
  3. Prek Prasab
    919 ha reached on 7 Feb
    0.7 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.91 ha
Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.91 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (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)
7 Feb 33.7 °C 41 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Feb 34.4 °C 45 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
9 Feb 32.5 °C 56 % 21 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 15
10 Feb 30.2 °C 61 % 28 km/h 3.1 mm Very low 4
11 Feb 33.7 °C 38 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
12 Feb 33.6 °C 35 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
13 Feb 33.4 °C 33 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
14 Feb 32.7 °C 38 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
15 Feb 32.7 °C 40 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
16 Feb 32.2 °C 42 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Feb 33.2 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Feb 32.8 °C 36 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Feb 33.4 °C 35 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Feb 32.7 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Feb 33.4 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
22 Feb 33.8 °C 34 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
23 Feb 34.5 °C 39 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Feb 33.9 °C 40 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 Feb 34.9 °C 40 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Feb 34.7 °C 45 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
27 Feb 34.4 °C 48 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
28 Feb 34.1 °C 46 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
1 Mar 35.3 °C 45 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
2 Mar 36.4 °C 43 % 28 km/h 2.0 mm Moderate 14
3 Mar 36.0 °C 38 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
4 Mar 36.4 °C 41 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
5 Mar 35.8 °C 42 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
6 Mar 36.2 °C 36 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Mar 36.3 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Mar 34.3 °C 42 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
9 Mar 35.6 °C 34 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Mar 35.4 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Mar 35.9 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Mar 36.3 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Mar 35.7 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Mar 35.1 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Mar 34.5 °C 43 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
16 Mar 34.3 °C 45 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Mar 33.3 °C 50 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
18 Mar 35.6 °C 40 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Mar 35.2 °C 46 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Mar 35.8 °C 46 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Mar 35.2 °C 45 % 27 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 20
22 Mar 36.6 °C 33 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Mar 36.9 °C 33 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Mar 36.5 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Mar 36.4 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Mar 37.5 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Mar 37.5 °C 36 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Mar 37.6 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Mar 36.5 °C 42 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Mar 37.4 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
31 Mar 37.3 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Apr 36.4 °C 42 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Apr 37.4 °C 45 % 27 km/h 1.2 mm High 24
3 Apr after 35.7 °C 51 % 22 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 21
4 Apr after 37.0 °C 41 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
5 Apr after 36.9 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.3 mm High 34
6 Apr after 36.8 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
7 Apr after 36.7 °C 39 % 19 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
8 Apr after 33.5 °C 53 % 25 km/h 2.0 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Jan 2021
After · 9 Apr 2021

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 · 2,541Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 February 2021 to 2 April 2021 (55 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 February 2021 to 26 March 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 23,495 hectares (235.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Sambour (21,754 ha, 4.0 %); Santuk (946 ha, 0.4 %); Prek Prasab (919 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 26 March 2021 → 2 April 2021.
  2. Start date: 14 February 2021 → 7 February 2021.

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?

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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 February 2021 to 26 March 2021. 2,541 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.