Wild Fires Raging in Russia’s Far East
Russia: Wild Fires Raging in Russia’s Far East
9 July 2002
ITAR-TASS News Agency, 9 July 2002
Wild fires are ravaging over 90 thousand hectares of forests in the Russian Far East.
The Far Eastern airbase has dispatched three groups of specialists in firefighting, 25 men each, to help protect the forests in Yakutia, Kamchatka and Chukotka, a source in the department ofnatural resources of the Russian Far East told ITAR-Tass on Tuesday. Most pockets of fire have been localized in the Khabarovsk Territory, and the local authorities are now fully in control of thesituation, which made it possible to send the three groups of specialists to the regions where the situation remains highly volatile and complicated.
In Yakutia, five major fires have been localized and eight have been extinguished. But 44 fires continue to rage in that republic’s territory. In Kamchatka, 11 forest fires have been registered; eightare on record in the Amur region, seven in the Magadan region.
The overall area ravaged by the fires is over 90 thousand hectares.
More than 2,200 people have been mobilized to fight the fires, and 275 vehicles are available for the fire-fighting efforts. according to a source in theregional office of he Ministry for Emergency Situations.
Since the beginning of the fire-prone season, 2.320 wild fires have been registered in the Russian Far East where some 330 thousand hectares of forests have been burned down.In Kamchatka, the forests have suffered most of all in the Bystrinsky and Milkovsky districts. According to specialists, the situation remains tense, even though the local firefighters have beenreinforced with 50 firemen from the region located east of Lake Baikal.
