Wildfires - Siberia
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has called in the army to fight the forest fires that have been raging across vast expanses of Siberia for days, enveloping entire cities in black smoke.
Environmentalists have warned that the scale of the blazes could accelerate global warming, aside from any immediate effects on the health of inhabitants.
About 3m hectares (7.4m acres) of land in the centre and east of the country were on fire on Wednesday, the authorities said.
The acrid smoke has affected small settlements as well as cities in Western Siberia and the Altai region, and also the Urals such as Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg. Air travel has also been disrupted.
Approximately 2,700 firefighters were tackling the fires. The defence ministry told news organisations that 10 planes and 10 helicopters had been dispatched to the Krasnoyarsk region, one of the worst affected.
No comments:
Post a Comment