Sesan fire, 26 January 2022 Sesan, Stueng Traeng
The fire started on 26 January 2022 in Sesan, Cambodia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,928 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 69th largest in Stung Treng since 2016 (of 130 with a page). Number 13 in Cambodia in 2022, of 37.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,928ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 21days
- 26 Jan 2022 – 15 Feb 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 26 Jan
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 207
- in a single hotspot: 127 MW
- Danger at start
- 23
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 64MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.1 mm on 14 Feb.
This area had burned before
83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,058 ha in 2017, 14 ha in 2018, 1,585 ha in 2019, 553 ha in 2020, 1,779 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,437 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started2,025 ha reached on 26 Jan0.8 %
-
921 ha reached on 26 Jan1.3 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Feb | 35.6 °C | 41 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 3 Feb | 35.9 °C | 39 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 4 Feb | 35.4 °C | 38 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 5 Feb | 33.3 °C | 41 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 6 Feb | 32.6 °C | 40 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 7 Feb | 35.8 °C | 39 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 8 Feb | 36.3 °C | 38 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 9 Feb | 36.8 °C | 38 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 10 Feb | 36.9 °C | 37 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 11 Feb | 36.8 °C | 37 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 12 Feb | 35.0 °C | 41 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 13 Feb | 36.2 °C | 38 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 14 Feb | 35.1 °C | 41 % | 28 km/h | 3.1 mm | Low 11 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 207Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 13,216 haSesanDecember 2019 · 51 days · 11 km away
- 16,629 haSesan15 January 2021 · 31 days · 13 km away
- 11,364 haSesan6 January 2022 · 45 days · 13 km away
- 30,976 haSesanDecember 2025 · 71 days · 14 km away
- 22,903 haSiem Pang26 January 2026 · 60 days · 14 km away
- 17,221 haSesan29 January 2017 · 52 days · 18 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sesan fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 January 2022 to 15 February 2022 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 February 2022 to 13 February 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,928 hectares (29.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sesan (2,025 ha, 0.8 %); Stueng Traeng (921 ha, 1.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 13 February 2022 → 15 February 2022.
- Start date: 2 February 2022 → 26 January 2022.
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
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 2 February 2022 to 13 February 2022. 207 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.
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.