Translated material
Stranglers of the Fatherland
The Prosecutor General demands to name the culprits of the environmental disaster in Moscow
Thursday morning was the gloomiest in the last two months, during which Moscow has been in a shrinking ring of peat fires. The smoke screen in the Russian capital reached such concentration and density that it was impossible to hide from it even behind tightly closed doors. Not only a persistent burning smell, but also plumes of smoke were observed yesterday in residential buildings, offices, shops, in ground transport and even in the subway. Moreover, as the metro employees themselves assure, the smoke density in some passages reached such a high level that the fire alarm went off. Visibility on the city streets dropped to 100 meters, which is why the capital's airports switched to increased security when landing planes, and as a result, 27 flights were sent to alternate airfields, in particular to Nizhny Novgorod. Interruptions also began in the movement of trains on the Moscow Railway - in such conditions it was very difficult for locomotive drivers to keep up with the schedule. The concentration of carbon monoxide in the city atmosphere was the highest in recent months and exceeded the permissible norm by more than three times. The “abnormality” of the air, however, was felt even without any instruments, and just yesterday many Muscovites, who had previously been skeptical of medical advice, nevertheless put on gauze bandages and respirators.City authorities continued to assure throughout the day that the situation in the city was close to normal. However, despite the assurances of the head of the capital’s health committee, Andrei Seltsovsky, that Muscovites did not turn to doctors for help more often, the ambulance service was nevertheless put on high alert and the consumption of medicines for patients with cardiovascular diseases and patients was increased with respiratory tract pathology. The Education Committee banned schools from holding classes in the open air, and teachers were advised not to hesitate to agree to parents' requests to release their children from classes in order to take them away from the suffocating city. This, however, is where the mayor’s office’s fight against smog has ended for now, although environmentalists, citing rich Western experience, recommend that the authorities act more decisively and, for the sake of the health of citizens, dare to take a number of unpopular measures. As Nikolai Fursov, director of the state unitary enterprise Mosekomonitoring, told a correspondent of the Vremya Novostey newspaper, in conditions of smoke, the concentration of automobile exhaust gases in the atmosphere of the capital has increased sharply, therefore, “the entry of vehicles into the territory of Moscow and the Moscow region should be limited.” According to Mr. Fursov, the situation is also aggravated by emissions from enterprises that continue to operate.
The federal authorities, who had previously been rather indifferent to smog, showed themselves more decisively. The thick smoke over Moscow had not yet cleared when Russian Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov became seriously concerned about finding those responsible for the environmental disaster. He ordered his subordinates to urgently deal with the smoke in Moscow and the Moscow region and promisingly stated that based on the results of the inspection, “appropriate procedural measures can be taken.”
Without waiting for results, potential targets of “procedural measures” began to shift the blame onto each other. Representatives of the regional fire service, which is now receiving all the blame, did not hide their irritation in a conversation with a Vremya Novostei newspaper correspondent yesterday. Firefighters believe that the regional administration paid attention to the burning forests and peatlands too late, and the state of emergency in the region “wisely” should have been introduced a month ago. And from unofficial sources it became known that Governor Gromov was forced to declare a state of emergency in the region only after two villages burned out in the Yegoryevsky and Shatursky districts on Monday afternoon and alarm calls “from above” began to be heard in his office.
Regional authorities traditionally cite a lack of funds and equipment. Only yesterday, after another request from the Governor of the Moscow Region Boris Gromov to allocate money from the government reserve fund for the purchase of special equipment, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov ordered the urgent transfer of 6.4 million rubles for these purposes. But firefighters have already stated that in the current state of affairs, only heavy rains, which, according to forecasters, are expected in mid-September, can extinguish burning forests and peatlands. Only Sergei Shoigu’s department demonstrates greater optimism. Deputy head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations Yuri Vorobyov said yesterday that the situation with fires in the Moscow region will be stabilized by the weekend. Over the past 24 hours (after the declaration of a state of emergency), 4 thousand civil defense soldiers and rescuers and 350 pieces of equipment were urgently transferred to the region from other regions. The commander of the Moscow Military District, Colonel General Ivan Efremov, ordered to send personnel from 56 garrisons to help the firefighters. In addition, since Wednesday, two special Il-76 tanker aircraft have been operating in the skies of the Moscow region, capable of dropping 42 tons of water in one pass.
In any case, the authorities of both the capital and the Moscow region should no longer hope for the leniency of the prosecutor’s office or the mercy of nature. According to the forecasts of the Anti-Storm Center of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, due to the continued dry and windless weather, the number of forest fires in the Moscow region will increase in the coming days or (under the most favorable circumstances) will not decrease. Over the past 24 hours alone, 189 new fires have emerged in the region with a total area of more than 500 hectares.