GFMC: Forest Fires in the Russian Federation
Forest Fires in the Russian Federation
03 September 2010
Latest News:
04 September
Nine injured in wildfires in Russia’s Volgograd region still in hospital
A total of nine people injured in wildfires in Russia’s Volgograd Region remain hospitalized, with another 19 receiving ambulatory treatment, a local emergency ministry department said in a statement on Saturday.
Wildfires raging in Russia’s Volgograd Region killed at least six people, with over 900 evacuated.
Over 500 buildings were destroyed by flames.
“531 buildings have burnt down, including 419 residential houses,” the statement said.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin allocated on Friday 1 billion rubles ($33 million) to the wildfire-stricken Volgograd and Saratov regions, a cabinet statement said.
President Dmitry Medvedev ordered that measures be stepped up in order to contain the new outbreak of fires, the Kremlin said.
Medvedev also ordered Russian Regional Development Minister Viktor Basargin to “organize the speedy rebuilding of houses and the payment of compensation to those affected.”
Experts fear that strong winds could cause the new fires to spread to other regions, namely the Astrakhan Region and the republics of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and Kalmykia, an emergencies spokesperson said earlier.
The fires that ravaged the European part of Russia in August killed over 50 people and destroyed more than 2,000 homes.
The government’s response to the disaster was widely criticized and the damage wreaked by the new blazes, coming just days after Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu declared the fires beaten, could provoke further criticism.
The Russian Investigative Committee said on Friday it sees signs of negligence in the actions of officials in the Volgograd region during efforts to put the fires out.
Source: en.rian.ru
03 September
8 killed in latest wave of Russian forest fires
The latest wave of forest fires in Russia has killed eight people and injured 17, authorities said Friday.
Fires blazed across much of European Russia in August following weeks of drought and record-high temperatures. A thick pall of smoke from the forest and peat-bog fires covered Moscow for several days.
About 500 houses were set ablaze, the Emergencies Ministry said. Although heavy rains helped quench the fires in much of the country, the southern regions of Volgograd, Saratov and Samara remain hot and dry.
A ministry statement said the new fires were fanned by high winds and some started when the winds caused power lines to cross, shooting off sparks.
The fires were most intense in the Volgograd region, where the deaths occurred and 380 houses were burned in 20 populated areas. Within hours, the fires burned down several villages in the Volgograd region.
Emergencies minister Sergei Shoigu said in televised remarks that by Friday night the fires were “localized and extinguished.”
In the Samara region, traffic on a main highway near the automobile manufacturing city of Togliatti was diverted for hours because of fire.
The ministry said its tanker planes and helicopters had made about 60 sorties to drop water on the fires by midday.
Source: www.google.com
Wildfire approaches federal highway in Volga area (Update 1)
Wildfires have been raging in forests on both sides of the M5 “Urals” federal highway linking Moscow and the Urals near the city of Togliatti in the Volga area, the regional emergencies service said on Friday.
“Due to strong winds there is a threat that the fire might spread to filling stations and wayside cafes,” the emergencies service said.
The Samara Region, in which Togliatti is located, borders the wildfire-hit Saratov Region.
Togliatti city authorities have re-introduced the state of emergency lifted on Wednesday.
Traffic on the M5 federal highway was halted some 30 km before the city zone, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported.
A rescuer working at the scene said two firefighting helicopters are expected to arrive by 9:00 Moscow time [5:00 GMT].
Source: en.rian.ru
Five dead as fires flare up again in southern Russia
MOSCOW, Friday 3 September 2010 (AFP) – Five people have died as forest and brush fires flared up again in Russia’s southern farmlands, burning down 532 homes and buildings, officials said on Friday.
“The bodies of five people were found in the fire, but this is preliminary information,” Mikhail Murzayev, the head of the investigative committee in the Volgograd region, told the RIA Novosti news agency.
Strong winds stoked fires that destroyed 532 buildings, including 400 homes, in about 20 villages in the Volgograd and Saratov regions, an emergency ministry spokeswoman said Friday. The Volgograd region lies some 1,000 kilometres southeast of Moscow.
“Thousands of people are without shelter,” the spokeswoman, Irina Andrianova, was quoted by the agency as saying.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday ordered authorities to mobilise all means to fight the fires as the emergency ministry warned the fires risked spreading to other southern regions.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday pledged the two fire-struck regions would receive one billion rubles (25.4 million dollars, 19.8 million euros) in emergency aid to rebuild after fire storms that have raged for months, the government said in a statement.
A state of emergency was also declared overnight to Friday in the Urals city of Tolyatti to the east as fires devoured some 200 hectares (nearly 500 acres) of forest nearby, Mayor Anatoly Pushkov was cited by RIA Novosti as saying.
Temperatures have fallen in Moscow since an unprecedented heatwave this summer, but in recent days they have still topped 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in the southern regions.
Forest fires ravaged about a million hectares in Russia in recent months, destroying whole villages and leaving more than 50 people dead, according to official tallies. Fires also threatened to engulf several nuclear plants.
An emergency alert was lifted on August 23 in the last of the seven regions affected by the fires. Source: www.mysinchew.com
GFMC analysis: According to the latest satellite-derived analysis provided by the Sukachev Institute for Forest and Emercom (using the NOAA AVHRR satellite data) and the Institute of Space Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences (using the MODIS satellite data) the total area burned by 18 August 2010 in the Russian Federation is:
NOAA AVHRR: 5.9 million ha
MODIS: 5.8 million ha
Note: The area burned includes all vegetation types (forest and non-forested land on the whole territory of the Russian Federation, including territories in which fires are monitored only but not controlled). This explains the discrepancy of fire statistics published by various government sources, which exclusively refer to forests under fire protection (see FAO Regional Fire Report Central Asia Region).
Note: Both, data and fire situation reports of Avialesookhrana from the National Forest Fire Centre of Russia as well as from Fire Laboratory of the Sukachev Institute of Forest, Krasnoyarsk are temporarily not available due to correction of satellite algorithms.
Fire danger map for 2 September:
Source: Sukachev Institute for Forest, Krasnoyarsk
Avialesookhrana from the National Forest Fire Centre of Russia provides up-to-date NOAA images for the whole of the Russian Federation and neighbour territories. The Space Monitoring Information Support Laboratory provides extensive links to sites with satellite imagery for the Russian Federation, meteorological information as well as fire related images are accessible.
The NOAA AVHRR satellite image composite shows fire activities in the Russian Federation.
Latest (03 September 2010 09:00 GMT) NOAA 12&14 AVHRR composite
The red squares indicate regions of active fires (MODIS Detection). For details the GFMC readers are encouraged to use the hyperlinks provided by Avialesookhrana, the Aerial Forest Fire Protection Service of the Federal Forest service of Russia.
(Source: Avialesookhrana cloudiness maps)
Eurasian Experimental Fire Weather Information System
The system has been developed by forest fire researchers from Canada, Russia and Germany is displayed on this website starting 18 July 2001. Complete information and a set of daily fire weather and fire behaviour potential maps covering Eurasia (the Baltic Region, Eastern Europe, countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Mongolia) can be accessed at:
https://gfmc.online/fwf/eurasia.html
Example of the Eurasian Experimental Fire Weather Information System:
Latest map of the Experimental Fire Weather Index (FWI) for Russia and neighbouring countries
Daily Fire Occurrence and Fire Danger Maps of the Fire Laboratory of the Sukachev Institute of Forest, Krasnoyarsk
Selected fire occurrence maps, satellite images and a forest fire danger map are prepared daily by the Russian GFMC correspondent Dr. Anatoly Sukhinin, Fire Laboratory of the Sukachev Institute of Forest, Krasnoyarsk, in collaboration with the Emergency Situation Monitoring and Forecasting Agency, Krasnoyarsk branch. The maps are produced on the base of satellite data (classification by the NOAA AVHRR). They show the fire locations (by latitude and longitude) and the area affected by fire (red signature, size in ha). The red arrow at each fire location points to the nearest populated place. The terms Oblast or Kray used in the maps are designations of administrative regions. A map showing the boundaries of administrative regions and a legend is included below.
Map legend
Administrative boundaries
Latest maps maps showing fire activities of 02 September 2010 (selection):
Overview map showing large fire locations detected over the last 10 days:
Overview
Latest maps maps showing fire activities of 02 September 2010 (selection):
Khakass Republic Krasnodar Kray Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area/Okrug
More maps of other regions are available on request: info@gfmc.org
For more details on fire in the Russian Federation:
- Regional Central Asia Wildland Fire Network
- International Conference on Cross-Border Forest Fires and Cooperation in their Suppression (hosted by Russia and supported by GFMC, June 2010)
- Report of the Seminar Wildfires and Human Security: fire Management on Terrain contaminated by Radioactivity, Unexploded Ordnance and Land Mines (Kiev / Chernobyl, Ukraine, 6-8 October 2009) (PDF, 0.1 MB)
- Chernobyl Resolution on Wildfires and Human Security: Challenges and Priorities for Action to address Problems of Wildfires burning on Terrain Contaminated by Radioactivity, Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) and Land Mines (PDF, 52 KB)
- IFFN Russian Federation Special Issue (IFFN 32)
- Russia 2002 fire report
- IFFN Russian Federation 2002 Fire Special (IFFN 28)
- IFFN Reports from Russia
- Fire Research Campaign Asia-North (FIRESCAN)
Bibliography on fire in ecosystems of boreal Eurasia:
One of the results of the first international fire science conference in the Russian Federation (1993) was the publication of a monograph on fire in boreal Eurasia, including some selected contributions on boreal North America. The literature cited in the monograph contains numerous publications which in many cases are not easily accessible. To facilitate literature search the bibliographical sources are provided by topic (chapter).
Goldammer, J.G. and V.V.Furyaev. 1996. Fire in Ecosystems of Boreal Eurasia. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 390 p.
