Russian emergency workers have increased forest patrols in a western region previously contaminated by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, trying to prevent wildfires from spreading harmful radiation, officials said on Wednesday.
At least six wildfires were spotted in the Bryansk region this week — the part of Russia that suffered the most from the Chernobyl catastrophe in what was then Soviet Ukraine — and fire crews quickly extinguished all of them, emergency situations ministry spokesman Irina Yegorushkina said.
Her agency also had reported sporadic wildfires last week, saying all had been put out. Radiation experts from Moscow conducted a thorough check of the Bryansk area, which borders Belarus and Ukraine, and concluded there has been no increase in radiation levels, she said.
Large forested areas in Bryansk were contaminated when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s Reactor No 4 exploded during a pre-dawn test on April 26, 1986, spewing radioactive clouds over much of the western Soviet Union and northern Europe.
Radioactive particles settled into the soil, and environmentalists have warned that they could be thrown up into the air once again by wildfires and blown into other areas by the wind. Russia’s emergency situations minister Sergei Shoigu acknowledged the danger last week, and his department says they are taking all precautions.
“We had several fires, but the situation here is not as difficult as in the areas around Moscow,” Yegorushkina told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The chief of the Bryansk forest protection service said his agency had increased patrols around the forests, particularly in the southwest section affected by Chernobyl.
“There is a danger, but we are controlling the situation,” agency chief Vladimir Rozinkevich told the AP. Wildfires have engulfed about 3,900 hectares (9,633 acres) in Bryansk and several other regions of Russia hit by the Chernobyl fallout, the Interfax news agency quoted the state forest protection service as saying.
Greenpeace and other environmental groups say radioactive dust from the Chernobyl disaster could be harmful even though doses will likely be small. In Vienna, the IAEA said it had no comment on the radioactive dangers posed by the wildfires.
Hundreds of wildfires sparked by the hottest summer ever recorded in Russia have engulfed large areas around Moscow and other parts of western Russia, cloaking the Russian capital in suffocating smog for a week.
The death rate in Moscow has doubled to 700 people a day, morgues are overflowing and residents are desperately seeking ways to counter soaring temperatures and acrid smoke.
About 165,000 workers and 39 firefighting aircraft were battling more than 600 blazes nationwide on Wednesday over more than 90,000 hectares (over 220,000 acres), the emergency ministry said.