How long did the Svay Leu fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 December 2019 to 12 January 2020 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 December 2019 to 5 January 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,651 hectares (46.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Svay Leu (4,657 ha, 2.4 %); Varin (24 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 42 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, 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 · 2019-12-20 → 2020-01-12

Svay Leu fire, 20 December 2019 Svay Leu, Varin

Out · last detection 13 Jan 2020, 19:01 UTC

The fire started on 20 December 2019 in Svay Leu, Cambodia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,651 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 3th largest in Siem Reap since 2016 (of 28 with a page). Number 14 in Cambodia in 2019, of 67.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Svay Leu · 2017 Svay Leu · 2017 Svay Leu · 2019 Anlong Veaeng · 2019

Burnt area: 4,651ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 24days; 20 Dec 2019 – 12 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 20 Dec; 2019
Heat detections: 184; in a single hotspot: 119 MW
Danger at start: 17; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 58MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Dec12 Jan

Play back 13 Jan 2020

How it evolved, day by day

20 Dec 25 Dec 30 Dec 3 Jan 7 Jan 11 Jan 12 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

34°high

31km/h · peak gust

42%lowest humidity

It had gone 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,267 ha in 2016, 1,942 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,137 ha that had burned before.

1,942 ha Svay Leu fire, February 2017 3,069 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.9% of the area of London (47 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

Svay Leu where it started

4,657 ha reached on 20 Dec

2.4 %
Varin

24 ha reached on 12 Jan

0.0 %

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 area0.10 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.10 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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	Danger (FWI)
20 Dec	33.0 °C	48 %	27 km/h	Moderate 17
21 Dec	33.0 °C	46 %	25 km/h	Moderate 17
22 Dec	32.8 °C	50 %	20 km/h	Moderate 16
23 Dec	33.2 °C	46 %	21 km/h	Moderate 16
24 Dec	33.6 °C	42 %	22 km/h	Moderate 18
25 Dec	33.2 °C	45 %	18 km/h	Moderate 18
26 Dec	32.5 °C	49 %	17 km/h	Moderate 19
27 Dec	31.8 °C	51 %	27 km/h	Moderate 20
28 Dec	31.3 °C	50 %	26 km/h	Moderate 21
29 Dec	31.6 °C	49 %	24 km/h	Moderate 20
30 Dec	33.1 °C	47 %	25 km/h	Moderate 21
31 Dec	32.1 °C	53 %	30 km/h	Moderate 21
1 Jan	32.3 °C	48 %	31 km/h	High 22
2 Jan	32.4 °C	47 %	30 km/h	High 22
3 Jan	32.7 °C	48 %	22 km/h	Moderate 20
4 Jan	32.6 °C	43 %	27 km/h	High 22
5 Jan	32.2 °C	49 %	22 km/h	Moderate 20
6 Jan	32.3 °C	46 %	24 km/h	Moderate 21
7 Jan	33.0 °C	50 %	28 km/h	High 22
8 Jan	33.2 °C	49 %	30 km/h	High 23
9 Jan	33.7 °C	51 %	24 km/h	High 22
10 Jan	34.2 °C	46 %	19 km/h	High 21
11 Jan	33.0 °C	50 %	20 km/h	Moderate 21
12 Jan	33.3 °C	45 %	22 km/h	High 22
13 Jan after	33.0 °C	41 %	29 km/h	High 24
14 Jan after	32.7 °C	39 %	26 km/h	High 24
15 Jan after	32.7 °C	42 %	25 km/h	High 24
16 Jan after	33.6 °C	43 %	18 km/h	High 22
17 Jan after	32.9 °C	45 %	26 km/h	High 25
18 Jan after	32.9 °C	46 %	23 km/h	High 24
19 Jan after	32.4 °C	47 %	25 km/h	High 25
20 Jan after	32.9 °C	43 %	28 km/h	High 26
21 Jan after	33.4 °C	44 %	24 km/h	High 26
22 Jan after	34.7 °C	38 %	23 km/h	High 24

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Dec 2019

After · 19 Jan 2020

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 · 184Every 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 Svay Leu fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 December 2019 to 12 January 2020 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 December 2019 to 5 January 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,651 hectares (46.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Svay Leu (4,657 ha, 2.4 %); Varin (24 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 42 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, 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 ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 5 January 2020 → 12 January 2020.
27 October 2026 Start date: 22 December 2019 → 20 December 2019.

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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What do you think is wrong?

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 December 2019 to 5 January 2020. 184 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.

Where it burned