Region: Russian fires still burning

Popular anger is growing as deadly blazes continue to burn in seven Russian regions.

"It's our country, and we can smell that our country is burning," Andrei Kolesnik, a 28-year-old economics professor, told The Wall Street Journal as he worked as a volunteer in the town of Lukhovisty, 84 miles southeast of the Russian capital.

The most serious situations remain in the Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and Kirov regions, according to the Emergency Situations Ministry. An estimated 10,000 firefighters continue to battle more than 500 fires that are still burning across 170,000 hectares (420,100 acres).

Smog in Moscow over the weekend reached levels 6.6 times the acceptable level, city officials said. The combination of extreme heat and fire-related air pollution has created major public health concerns in the Russian capital. 

"The average death rate in the city during normal times is between 360 and 380 people per day. Today, we are around 700," said Andrei Seltsovsky, head of Moscow's health department.

Seltsovsky told Reuters that heat stroke was the main cause of death.

Still, most Muscovites continued to go about their business, many donning face masks. Seltsovsky said the city had ordered 3.2 million masks for residents. 

The fires began in late July and were triggered by the hottest weather since record-keeping began 130 years ago.

On Aug. 4, President Dmitry Medvedev fired several military officials after a naval facility 100 kilometers outside of Moscow burned to the ground. A nuclear research facility east of Moscow in Sarov, where the first Soviet atomic bomb was developed, was also under threat, but that fire was extinguished Aug. 8, the Moscow Times reported.

As of press time, more than 4,000 people have been rendered homeless and 52 killed across 14 different regions with 730,000 hectares affected, according to official government estimates. An estimated 20 percent of the country's wheat crop has been destroyed, prompting Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to freeze grain exports. World wheat prices rose at the fastest rate in 30 years on the news.

A sense of anger at the perceived slow response by both national and local officials has triggered outspoken criticisms from members of the general public, and a poll released Aug. 9 suggested both Putin's and Medvedev's popularity are decliding.

One resident of a village in the Tver region drew Putin's attention after writing a blog that read: "In Soviet times, there were three fire ponds in the village, a bell that tolled when a fire began, and - guess what? - a fire truck."

Putin responded that Soviet officials never had to deal with such a heat wave and pledged that the village would receive a bell.

Russian media reports noted that as firefighters approached the fires, they commonly found roads accessing the forests in poor condition, retention ponds meant to be a water source heavily polluted, and that fire trucks are frequently breaking down.

According to the International Herald Tribune, officials in Orekhovo-Zuyevo, 85 kilometers east of Moscow, were also blaming changes to the forest code in 2006, which placed logging companies in charge of firefighting. The same changes also cut the number of foresters assigned to that district from 300 to 150.

Forest fires are common in Russia, but often occur in remote regions of Siberia. Last year at this time, forest fires had consumed 930,000 hectares of land, according to the Emergency Situations Ministry.

The difference this year is the location of the fires, which are much closer to inhabited areas, including Moscow.

Benjamin Cunningham can be reached at
bcunningham@praguepost.com