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Sambour fire, 15 January 2023 Sambour

Out · last detection 8 Feb 2023, 18:25 UTC

The fire started on 15 January 2023 in Sambour, Cambodia, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,731 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 46th largest in Kratie since 2016 (of 80 with a page). Number 11 in Cambodia in 2023, of 28.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sambour · 2021Sambour · 2022Sambour · 2020Sambour · 2017

Burnt area
2,731ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
15 Jan 2023 – 8 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
15 Jan
2023
Heat detections
164
in a single hotspot: 116 MW
Danger at start
9
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
77MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jan8 Feb
8 Feb 2023

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jan 2023 · 40 MW · 7 16 Jan 2023 · 24 MW · 6 17 Jan 2023 · 15 MW · 5 18 Jan 2023 · 18 MW · 4 19 Jan 2023 · 49 MW · 9 20 Jan 2023 · 23 MW · 3 21 Jan 2023 · 10 MW · 2 22 Jan 2023 · 4 MW · 1 23 Jan 2023 · 130 MW · 7 24 Jan 2023 · 6 MW · 2 25 Jan 2023 · 7 MW · 3 26 Jan 2023 · 62 MW · 11 27 Jan 2023 · 41 MW · 7 28 Jan 2023 · 494 MW · 22 29 Jan 2023 · 26 MW · 12 30 Jan 2023 · 822 MW · 41 31 Jan 2023 · 16 MW · 2 1 Feb 2023 · 10 MW · 3 2 Feb 2023 · 5 MW · 1 3 Feb 2023 · 5 MW · 1 4 Feb 2023 · 48 MW · 5 5 Feb 2023 · 63 MW · 6 6 Feb 2023 · 6 MW · 1 7 Feb 2023 · 3 MW · 1 8 Feb 2023 · 1 MW · 2
15 Jan 19 Jan 23 Jan 27 Jan 30 Jan 31 Jan 4 Feb 8 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
56km/h · peak gust
38%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 451 ha in 2016, 1,225 ha in 2020, 3,547 ha in 2021, 2,967 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,673 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
    2,745 ha reached on 15 Jan
    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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
20 Jan 30.7 °C 49 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
21 Jan 31.5 °C 49 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
22 Jan 32.2 °C 52 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
23 Jan 33.9 °C 47 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
24 Jan 33.0 °C 43 % 44 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 12
25 Jan 29.5 °C 44 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
26 Jan 31.4 °C 46 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
27 Jan 31.7 °C 46 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
28 Jan 31.6 °C 38 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
29 Jan 29.5 °C 42 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
30 Jan 28.7 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
31 Jan 32.0 °C 45 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
1 Feb 32.8 °C 46 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
2 Feb 33.5 °C 54 % 31 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 12
3 Feb 34.2 °C 42 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
4 Feb 34.2 °C 41 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
5 Feb 34.5 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
6 Feb 33.4 °C 51 % 18 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 14
7 Feb 33.5 °C 51 % 18 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 14
8 Feb 34.0 °C 47 % 21 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 14
9 Feb after 34.5 °C 44 % 21 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 15
10 Feb after 33.0 °C 52 % 19 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 15
11 Feb after 34.3 °C 45 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Jan 2023
After · 15 Feb 2023

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 · Copernicus

On 22 January 2023 the air beside the fire reached 117 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 47: 3.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak117 µg/m³
Days over the guideline14 days
PM10167 µg/m³
Optical depth0.95
18192021222324252627282930311234
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 164Every 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 15 January 2023 to 8 February 2023 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 January 2023 to 1 February 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,731 hectares (27.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sambour (2,745 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, class Moderate.
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: 1 February 2023 → 8 February 2023.
  2. Start date: 20 January 2023 → 15 January 2023.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 January 2023 to 1 February 2023. 164 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.

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.