Translated material
Russia is on fire
Photo: ITAR-TASSIn Russia, according to the Federal Forestry Agency, 1.321 million hectares have burned since the beginning of the fire season. The head of the agency, Viktor Maslyakov, reported this to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev at a government meeting on the situation with forest fires in Russia. The total number of forest fires exceeded 16 thousand.
Now, according to statistics from Rosleskhoz, there are about 200 forest fires in Russia on an area of about 18 thousand hectares. The most difficult situation is in Siberia and the Urals. An emergency situation (ES) regime is in effect in 11 constituent entities, including throughout the Tomsk region, Khabarovsk and Krasnoyarsk territories, and in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. Partially, the Kurgan, Amur, Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, Volgograd and Kirov regions and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) fell under the emergency regime. In 33 regions there is a ban on citizens visiting forests and the entry of vehicles.
“The situation this year is much worse than usual, and worse than in 2010-2011 combined,” says Grigory Kuksin, head of the Greenpeace fire project. According to the ecologist, the situation has long gone beyond the control of the authorities: “Since the beginning of the season, the situation was quite tense, but due to the fact that the authorities made every effort to hide the fires, not reflect them in reporting and create the appearance of prosperity, they were in no hurry to introduce emergency regimes and allocate additional funds. The situation has long ago gotten out of control and depends entirely on the weather.” According to satellite image data used for monitoring by Greenpeace, at the moment in Central Siberia alone there are about 500 thousand hectares of active, unlocalized fires, while the total area covered by fire is more than 10 million hectares. Thus, the data of ecologists is almost 10 times higher than official statistics. “Instead of focusing on the data they receive from their high-precision surveillance systems, the Ministry of Emergency Situations and Rosleskhoz pretend to trust the reports of local authorities, thereby provoking them to underestimate the data. The Amur region underestimated the data by 100 times, Yakutia by 50 times “,” Grigory Kuksin told PublicPost. “It is impossible to make management decisions based on data that is 100 times lower.”
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Rosleskhoz explains the discrepancy in the data by a difference in the calculation methodology. “We don’t underestimate the data,” Nikolai Kovalev, adviser to the head of Rosleskhoz, told PublicPost. “We have a 6-fold discrepancy with the subjects, according to our public map it is clear that we have the same information as Greenpeace. They just count the entire area, while there is a lot of burning in areas not covered by forests - swamps, tundra."
Rosleskhoz claims that the situation is under control: “All fires are controlled and monitored. The exception is 4 fires in the Ust-Maisky district of the Sakha Republic. There, by decision of the emergency commission, forests will not be extinguished: the fire does not threaten anyone and should go away to natural boundaries, since the area is very remote and extinguishing will cost more than the economic damage from fires." According to Kovalev, the scale of fires this year is comparable to 2011 and significantly less than in 2010.
At the same time, Greenpeace has no disagreements with Rosleskhoz regarding the causes of the fires. This is uncontrolled agricultural burning (burning dry grass) - the main cause of spring fires, and human carelessness with fire: unextinguished fires, abandoned cigarette butts and setting fire to forests in order to hide illegal logging. Therefore, on the one hand, environmentalists are advocating for the introduction of responsibility for agricultural fires, on the other hand, Rosleskhoz proposes to additionally fence off villages and industrial facilities and divide the forest with protective strips.
For now, professional firefighters are helped by volunteers. However, their numbers, according to Greenpeace, are insufficient, and the law “On Voluntary Fire Protection” , adopted after the volunteer wave of fighting fires in 2010, is, according to the ecologist, not working at all: “This is complete profanity and an attempt by frightened officials who "shocked the level of self-organization of people in 2010, making volunteer activities absolutely impossible. The law creates a lot of obstacles and administrative barriers, making volunteering within this framework impossible." As Kuksin told PublicPost, most of the volunteers now participating in firefighting ignore the law: “These are ordinary people who do not register anywhere, they go out to help where, for example, a populated area that they want to protect is burning.” At the same time, the ecologist notes, the law gave rise to the massive creation on paper of non-existent organizations. “No one will ever forbid a volunteer to come up and put out a fire,” says a representative of Rosleskhoz. “When the house is on fire, grandparents, granddaughters, cats and dogs run to put out the house, and no one will ask if they have a license to do this. On the other hand, it would be nice to insure these people: who will pay for their sick leave if something happens? They are all, as a rule, on vacation and buy everything with their own money: sleeping bags, tents, food.”
In the meantime, the situation remains critical. Smog from forest fires shrouded large Siberian cities: Omsk, Tomsk, Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk. PublicPost found out how people feel in cities shrouded in haze and how they evaluate the work of the authorities in eliminating the fires.
"The city is in a haze. The number of visits to hospitals and the number of ambulance calls has increased. The airport functions intermittently. There is no warning system. But sprinklers now travel 6 times a day along the main streets. Fires are being fought, fire departments have been mobilized. By decree of the regional governor, it is prohibited being in the forests."
Photo: Dmitry Kandinsky
“The smog was like in Moscow in 2010. Everything was tight, it was hard to breathe. Fortunately, there is no shortage of gauze bandages. On TV, the Ministry of Emergency Situations informs the population about the situation every hour or two. Only the Ministry of Emergency Situations is engaged in firefighting - there are no volunteers, since the forests are located in remote and in hard-to-reach areas, in the swamps. In principle, everything is fine and everything is calm. But it was decided to cancel mass sports events.”
"In Tomsk and the Tomsk region, the situation with forest fires is critical. On July 24, 2012, the regional center was covered in smoke from fires. On July 27, 2012, the smoke became either more or less, but in general it was like a fog. In the north of the region, it is growing day by day area of fires. The Tomsk authorities are hiding from the federal Russian authorities the real extent of the natural disaster in the Tomsk region. The situation with the fires, according to those who are extinguishing them, is practically out of control. Most of the territory of the Tomsk region must be declared a natural disaster zone. . And solve the problem with fires in the Tomsk region throughout the country."
"Yesterday there was some smoke, but today there is much less. There was heavy smoke about three weeks ago for several days. But now the situation is completely normal, there is no smoke."
Andrey Skovorodnikov, Krasnoyarsk:
“Now, one might say, fires do not affect the lives of city residents. The city has long been accustomed to smog; there is haze even without fires in any windless weather.
The authorities warned through the media that it is not very useful to be in the city now and recommended that everyone go somewhere for a week. They just forgot to recommend vacations to employers. But in any case, the warning system works.
Extinguishing work is certainly underway. However, given how our forestry industry and everything that goes with it were being destroyed, I don’t think there are enough resources to put out the fires. Just remember how the peat bogs near Moscow burned 2 years ago. There were a lot of loud words back then about restoring fire extinguishing systems, monitoring systems, forest ranger services - none of this is being done. Otherwise, the fight against forest fires would proceed in a completely different way."
“The city is covered in a shroud of smog, this is especially noticeable when leaving the city. The forests are burning. The authorities are doing almost nothing. They have introduced restrictions on trips to the forest and to some nature reserves. That’s all. And they run advertisements on television so that bonfires are not lit.”
“I was in Novosibirsk for the last time 2 days ago. It was very similar to the smog in Moscow in 2010: the nearest building is visible, and behind it there is fog. There seemed to be no rumors of health problems or increased mortality.
Why not alert us about smog? You can see him through the window. And the forecasts are known. "In Novosibirsk there has been little rain since May and the temperature is about 30 degrees."
Alexander Morsin, Novosibirsk:
“You can’t say that you can’t breathe. No. The situation in Omsk is much worse. We have an excess of smoke levels in the city, in my opinion, not so significant. Everything is more or less normal.”
Kirill Loginov, Novosibirsk:
“Everything is fine now. I look out the window - everything has cleared up. There was a little smoke in the morning, but last night and at night there was a lot of smoke.”