Russia’s air force has put out 753,000 hectares of forest fires in Siberia in four days, the country’s Ministry of Defence said on Sunday, as environmentalists described the blazes raging across the region as an ecological catastrophe.
“After four days of work in the Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk regions, the Russian airforce has managed to extinguish forest fires on an area of 753,000 hectares (7,530 square kilometres),” the Ministry said in a statement.
On Sunday, the statement added, Il-76 military transport aircraft carried out a total of 24 missions in which they threw 1,008 tons of water into the forests.
In addition, Mi-8 helicopters conducted 37 flights and threw another 6,500 tons of water.
‘Ecological catastrophe’
President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian army to take part in fire-fighting efforts in Siberia on Wednesday.
“Hundreds of people are affected by the effects of smoke,” said Deputy Emergency Minister Alexandr Chuprián, who arrived Sunday in the Irkutsk region to coordinate extinction operations.
A series of enormous wildfires have spread across Russia’s eastern region of Siberia, prompting states of emergency to be declared and sparking outrage from locals who say authorities aren’t responding enough.
The fires, which have been burning for several weeks, have spread across almost 3 million hectares of land, the Federal Forestry Agency has said.
That’s an area almost the size of Belgium.
States of emergencies have been declared across five regions in response to the fires, which have burned more than a million hectares each in the worst-affected areas of the Sakha Republic and Krasnoyarsk.
But while environmental groups such as Greenpeace have described the event as an “ecological catastrophe”, Russian authorities have taken a less drastic approach.
Russia’s Federal Forestry Agency said last week that the fires did not pose “a threat to human settlements and economic facilities. ” The projected cost of extinguishing them exceeds the projected damage that they may cause,” the agency said.
Alexander Uss, the governor of the Krasnoyarsk region, was quoted in Russian media as saying it would be “meaningless” and “perhaps even harmful” to deploy thousands of people to help extinguish the flames.
He said: “The fact is that this is a common natural phenomenon, to fight with which it is meaningless, but somewhere, perhaps even harmful.”
This slow response from Russian authorities has sparked an angry backlash from local populations, who report struggling to live amid thick smoke that has spread and blanketed major surrounding cities and territories.
More than 1 million people, at the time of writing, have signed a petition demanding a state of emergency be declared across the whole of Siberia, and that more be done to battle the flames.
It says: “Imagine what’s happening in the core of the disaster right now with forests and animals burning alive.”
“Burning down of forests results in groundwater level decrease and possible freshwater shortage.”
Pointing out that the proximity of the flames to human settlements was not the only burden, the petition added: “It has been causing respiratory difficulties for humans and animals, and endangering various species of fauna and flora.”
Aside from smoke reaching areas across Russia, neighbouring Mongolia has also expressed its concern.
Purevjav Soronzonbold, a senior officer at the Firefighting Department of the Mongolian National Emergency Management Agency, was quoted in reports as saying it had been “seriously watching” the outcome of the blaze.
‘Hard to breathe’
Meanwhile, social media users living in cities affected by the smoke have been posting content demonstrating the poor visibility and discussing their difficulties with breathing.
One Nizhnevartovsk-based user said the smoke was “simply trouble”, but added that she was for the moment “fine”.
She said: “Our small town is in the ring and the embrace of swamps, taiga, lakes and rivers. This smog came from Krasnoyarsk. At the moment we are fine. But this is temporary. Save our land!”
Another user said the smoke was causing “a nightmare”. Captioning her pictures, she pointed out: “You can’t even see the bridge, the roads and the cars.”
Severe flooding
While some parts of Siberia have been battling with effects of the huge wildfires, others have been battling against another round of severe flooding.
The first round came after a cyclone hit the region’s south in June, bringing torrential rain that burst river banks and inundated local settlements.
At least 25 people were killed in last month’s flooding, with seven people still missing.
On Wednesday, the Russian emergencies ministry said a further 25 settlements had been flooded, adding to the more than a hundred settlements flooded in June.