«Burn clearly!»: Summer fires in Russia

Kremlin today

After numerous floods, a heat wave descended on Russia, accompanied by annual fires. There are more than 400 of them across the country. 6545 rescuers, about a thousand units of special equipment and 35 aircraft are involved in the fight against the elements. 57 more planes and helicopters are monitoring the situation.

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Why and where do fires occur?

The main cause of fires is considered to be dry thunderstorms (lightning strikes without rain, and the fire is not extinguished by anything). Some fires also appear due to an accidentally thrown cigarette butt or a campfire left by tourists. And here are the regions with the largest number of fires this year:

  1. Republic of Karelia (39 fires);
  2. Irkutsk region (30 fires);
  3. Magadan region (20 fires);
  4. Chukotka Autonomous Okrug (16 fires);
  5. Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug (10 fires);
  6. The Republic of Komi, Primorye, the Krasnoyarsk Territory and other regions of Russia.

The most difficult situation is now in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). More than 200 fires are destroying forests on an area of 1.5 million hectares. Smoke from fires covered 51 settlements, people are suffocating from a dense veil of smog. The authorities of Yakutia are asking residents not to go out, and in some areas the evacuation of the population has already begun or has completely passed. Flights were canceled at airports, ship traffic was partially blocked on the Lena River, and some highways were closed.

ntv.ru

“In general, the situation is not getting better and cannot get better. Whatever forces are being thrown now, even if all the forces of the Ministry of Defense, even the forces of the Ministry of Defense of other countries, to be honest, this will not fix the situation, because the situation already depends mainly on the weather. That is, of course, this does not mean that firefighters are not doing something useful — they are doing, of course, they are saving settlements, saving the most valuable territories, including now work is continuing to protect nature reserves, national parks, ” — said Grigory Kuksin, head of the fire department of Greenpeace Russia about the situation in Yakutia. 

Kids are heroes

It’s not just adults who are fighting fire. In Togliatti, a group of children, noticing a fire, began to extinguish the fire on their own. The boys and girls distributed the roles and protected the railway until the arrival of the firefighters. The whole city learned about the heroes who are afraid of punishment more than fire. A similar story happened in the Tula region. On July 10, three boys noticed smoke near the forest rising over the settlement. The children began to extinguish the fire without the help of adults. Someone from the village called the Ministry of Emergency Situations, but the help went to the scene for three hours. The youngest of the boys was only nine years old.

Mash

Public reaction

The deterioration of the situation with fires in Russia caused a great public outcry. Every day, many posts and angry comments about smog and smoke appear on social networks (Instagram, TikTok and VK). Users have also introduced new hashtags. Only on one “The fire in Yakutia” there are already about a million views.

“In Namtsy, the sky is yellow.. Everything is in smoke, there is nothing to breathe,” — the commentators write in TikTok.