Perilous Times
Forest fires destroy Moscow military base
A burnt out car is seen in the village Mokhovoye, Lukhovitsi municipal
district, some 130 kilometers from Moscow, on August 3, 2010. Russia's
worst heatwave for decades shows no sign of relenting, officials warned
as firefighters battled hundreds of wildfires in a national disaster
that has claimed at least 50 lives. President Dmitry Medvedev has
declared a state of emergency in seven Russian regions over the fires
which have left tens of thousands of hectares of land ablaze and
uprooted hundreds from their homes. Photo courtesy AFP.
by Staff Writers
Moscow (AFP) Aug 3, 2010
Forest fires plaguing Russia destroyed a naval logistics base outside
Moscow, torching aeronautical equipment and vehicles, investigators
said Tuesday.
The fire at the base in Kolomna, southeast of the capital, destroyed
the staff headquarters, financial department, 13 warehouses containing
aeronautical equipment and 17 storage areas containing vehicles, a
statement from the committee investigating the blaze said.
"The base was affected by forest fires on July 29 and the blaze was
contained on July 30 without any casualties," said the statement.
An investigation was under away to establish the extent of the damage
and the exact circumstances leading to the blaze, the statement said.
The fire was first reported by tabloid news website Life News, which
cited sources saying the base was entirely destroyed with 200 planes
torched and losses estimated at 20 billion rubles (500 million euros).
Strategic sites have not been spared from the advance of the fires,
which have killed at least 50 people amid an unprecedented heatwave.
Hundreds of emergency workers are being sent to the city of Sarov, the
location of Russia's main nuclear research facility, to ensure the
top-secret site is not damaged by fires on the city's outskirts.
earlier related report
Russian wildfires keep spreading
Moscow (UPI) Aug 3, 2010 - Wildfires continued to rage across Russia
Tuesday with authorities unable to stop them despite a massive
firefighting operation.
The fires have destroyed residential houses, consumed farmland, left
2,000 people homeless and killed at least 50 people in several regions
around Moscow, causing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to declare a
state of emergency.
The Kremlin has dispatched some 200,000 emergency workers and dozens of
planes to fight the fires but it's proving an uphill battle due to
strong winds and the hottest summer since temperature recordings began
130 years ago.
Russian authorities reported 529 fires raging Tuesday, covering an area
of 425,000 acres, compared with 460 fires Monday.
The regions of Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh and Ryazan have been worst
hit. The government has sent extra firefighters to protect a major
nuclear facility at Sarov, in Nizhny Novgorod, a top secret site during
the Cold War, the BBC reports. At Sarov, founded after World War II,
the Russian nuclear weapons program was developed.
A spokesman for Russia's nuclear energy agency Rosatom told Russian
news agency RIA Novosti that Rosatom head Sergei Kiriyenko has left for
Sarov to coordinate the firefighting activities near the nuclear
facility.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin over the weekend stopped his
summer vacation to fly into the crisis region, promising locals that
their burned-down villages would be rebuilt before the winter.
Yet the Kremlin won't be able to replace the crops that have been
consumed by the fire: Around one-fifth of Russia's expected grain
harvest has been destroyed, causing wheat prices on international
markets to climb to a 22-month highs.
In Moscow, people were encouraged to wear gauze masks because of the
smoke that has clouded the capital for days.
Officials don't expect a quick end to the fires. The heat wave, ongoing
since early July, is expected to bring strong winds and temperatures of
more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit to Russia this week.
"The situation is still very difficult; the heat is not abating; the
forecasts are not looking good, so the threat of new fires is not
decreasing," Medvedev wrote in his blog, RIA Novosti reports.
In a bid to improve the reaction to future fires, the president Tuesday
ordered Emergency Minister Sergei Shoigu to draw up a special program
to boost the firefighting service, including increasing the number of
vehicles and airplanes to move firefighters around.
"Separate funding will need to be set aside for that," he was quoted as
saying by RIA Novosti.