Siem Pang fire, February 2017 Siem Pang
The fire started on 24 February 2017 in Siem Pang, Cambodia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,420 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 95th largest in Stung Treng since 2016 (of 130 with a page). Number 43 in Cambodia in 2017, of 60.
The power measured by the satellite is low (24.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Siem Pang · 2026Sesan · 2025Sesan · 2022Sesan · 2019
- Burnt area
- 2,420ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 24 Feb 2017 – 8 Mar 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 24 Feb
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 88
- in a single hotspot: 24 MW
- Average daily power
- 48MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 279 ha in 2016.
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
-
Siem Pang where it started2,432 ha reached on 26 Feb0.5 %
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 2015Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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
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 · 88Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 22,903 haSiem Pang2 February 2026 · 47 days · 6 km away
- 30,976 haSesanDecember 2025 · 71 days · 24 km away
- 11,364 haSesan6 January 2022 · 45 days · 28 km away
- 13,216 haSesanDecember 2019 · 51 days · 30 km away
- 16,629 haSesan15 January 2021 · 31 days · 31 km away
- 10,697 haSesan1 January 2016 · 106 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Siem Pang fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 February 2017 to 8 March 2017 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 February 2017 to 2 March 2017.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,420 hectares (24.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Siem Pang (2,432 ha, 0.5 %).
- 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 2 March 2017 → 8 March 2017.
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 24 February 2017 to 2 March 2017. 88 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.