How long did the Sesan fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 January 2019 and 21 January 2019: 21 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 4,901 hectares (49.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Sesan (4,931 ha, 1.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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 · 2019-01-01 → 2019-01-21

Sesan fire, 1 January 2019 Sesan

Out · last detection 22 Jan 2019, 18:36 UTC

The fire started on 1 January 2019 in Sesan, Cambodia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,901 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 30th largest in Stung Treng since 2016 (of 130 with a page). Number 12 in Cambodia in 2019, of 67.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sesan · 2016 Sesan · 2017 Sesan · 2021 Sesan · 2019

Burnt area: 4,901ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 1 Jan 2019 – 21 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 1 Jan; 2019
Heat detections: 495; in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start: 21; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 85MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Jan21 Jan

Play back 22 Jan 2019

How it evolved, day by day

1 Jan 6 Jan 9 Jan 12 Jan 14 Jan 15 Jan 18 Jan 21 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

49km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,838 ha in 2016, 1,282 ha in 2017, 21 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,086 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.1% of the area of London (49 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

Sesan where it started

4,931 ha

1.8 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
1 Jan	32.7 °C	39 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
2 Jan	30.4 °C	44 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
3 Jan	33.0 °C	41 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	High 23
4 Jan	33.7 °C	42 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
5 Jan	36.0 °C	34 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
6 Jan	35.0 °C	40 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
7 Jan	35.9 °C	32 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
8 Jan	35.2 °C	35 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
9 Jan	35.2 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
10 Jan	35.7 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
11 Jan	36.2 °C	33 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
12 Jan	35.4 °C	33 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
13 Jan	36.3 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
14 Jan	35.6 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
15 Jan	35.4 °C	26 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
16 Jan	35.0 °C	35 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
17 Jan	34.4 °C	40 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
18 Jan	34.9 °C	30 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Jan	35.1 °C	30 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
20 Jan	35.9 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
21 Jan	35.1 °C	32 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Jan after	35.0 °C	30 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
23 Jan after	33.5 °C	30 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
24 Jan after	33.7 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
25 Jan after	33.4 °C	30 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Jan after	34.0 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
27 Jan after	33.8 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 Jan after	34.2 °C	28 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
29 Jan after	34.6 °C	32 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
30 Jan after	35.6 °C	31 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
31 Jan after	34.9 °C	33 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Dec 2018

After · 28 Jan 2019

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 · 495Every 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 Sesan fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 January 2019 and 21 January 2019: 21 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 4,901 hectares (49.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Sesan (4,931 ha, 1.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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 ↗

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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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 495 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.

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