A light fog and a burning smell covered neighborhoods in Moscow on Thursday, August 18, as a result of major forest fires in a region neighboring the Russian capital, in the midst of a heat wave.
According to the Federal Forestry Agency (Rosleskhoz), 850 people and 300 machines, including three planes and helicopters, were deployed to put out the fires in the Ryazan region, about 250 kilometers southeast of Moscow.
Read alsoVolunteer firefighters at the heart of firefighting
According to the NGO Greenpeace, based on satellite images, these fires have affected an area of more than 3,300 hectares in recent days. On Telegram, the region’s acting governor, Pavel Malkov, said on Wednesday evening that at least 800 hectares had been crossed by the flames. Thursday morning, he said that three fires were still in progress over an area of 181 hectares, in particular in the Oka nature reserve and the Mechchiorski national park, large marshy areas. In a statement, the Rosleskhoz agency accused the local forest authorities of havinghidden the real extent” fires, which “prevented the timely mobilization of federal forces“.
Local firefighters and rangers arriving from other areas are currently fighting the fire together or are on their way, the same source said. The Minister of Emergency Situations, Alexandre Kourenkov, is expected on site. “The causes of the fire are unknown, but no thunderstorms or natural causes have been observed in the area, so it is likely man-made. Severe soil drought, heat and wind favored its spread“, explained Thursday Greenpeace, which sent a team of firefighters to the scene. The NGO specifies that these forest and peat fires concern an area already devastated in 2010 by serious fires whose thick smoke had covered Moscow for days, with serious health consequences.
Read alsoFires in Algeria: at least 38 dead including families trapped in a bus
Greenpeace adds that another fire has been affecting peat bogs in the Nizhny Novgorod region for several days, where it covers more than 6,000 hectares, according to estimates from satellite images. An expert from this NGO, Sofia Kosacheva, regretted that it was necessary to wait for the smoke to reach Moscow for the authorities and the media to react. “There are a lot of fires in other areas that are not talked about (…) people in remote villages live for months in the smoke. Local authorities don’t put out these fires, they pretend they don’t exist“, she said, quoted in a statement from Greenpeace. With climate change, which it is suffering from the full force, Russia has been hit in recent years by serious forest fires, particularly in Siberia and the Far East, gigantic and difficult to access areas.
SEE ALSO – In Algeria, fires rage in 14 departments