Russia declares state of emergency for four regions over wildfires(photos)
Russia has declared a state of emergency in the forests in four regions of Siberia and the Far East over mass wildfires, the Russian Aerial Forest Protection Service said Monday.
The state of emergency has been declared for the entire regions of Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk and parts of the Republic of Buryatia and Sakha (Yakytia) Republic, the service said in a statement.
According to the statement, by Monday forest wildfires were raging on nearly 3 million hectares in Russia, and extinguishing activities were underway in an area of 89,506 hectares.
It said that, over the last 24 hours, 51 forest fires were eliminated in Russia on an area of 13,422 hectares.
The service is now monitoring, with the help of satellites, 328 wild forest fires on an area of 2,731,541 hectares in remote areas, for which the extinguishing work has been terminated or did not begin due to difficult access, it said.
Wildfires rage in Russian forests every year. They affected an area of over 3 million hectares last year, according to Russian media reports.
