A blanket of wildfire smoke has engulfed towns across Siberia’s Krasnoyarsk region following a region-wide emergency declaration, with officials warning Monday that the territory now accounts for nearly half of all wildfires in Russia.
“Heavy smoke has spread across all settlements in the district due to a large number of active fires,” Yevgeny Petrenko, head of the northern Yeniseysky district in the Krasnoyarsk region, said Sunday.
While officials have said they do not expect flames to reach populated areas, local media published images of a thick layer of smoke suffocating the towns of Lesosibirsk and Yeniseysk, which have a combined population of around 80,000 people.
In one widely shared video, a man was seen walking his dog while wearing a gas mask.
“It’s getting harder and harder to breathe inside our own apartments,” a local Telegram channel reporting on the emergency in Lesosibirsk wrote. IQAir, an air quality tracking company, shows that the air quality level in the area is “unhealthy.”
More than 50 wildfires are active across nine municipal districts in the Krasnoyarsk region. Authorities have blamed the fires on summer heat and Siberian silk moth infestations, which have killed off vast swathes of trees and left behind highly flammable deadwood.
Russia’s Aerial Forest Protection Service said Monday that it was deploying controlled explosives to blast firebreaks in an effort to contain three large blazes in northwestern Krasnoyarsk.
“The situation in these remote, hard-to-reach areas has been heavily aggravated by recent lightning storms, combined with unseasonably warm and dry weather,” the federal agency said.
NASA satellite imagery shows several fire hotspots in the area around Lesosibirsk and Yeniseysk, with plumes of smoke visible from space.
More than 1,300 personnel, 50 pieces of heavy ground equipment and 30 aircraft have been deployed to fight the fires across the region.
A Message from The Moscow Times:
Dear readers,
We are facing unprecedented challenges. Russia's Prosecutor General's Office has designated The Moscow Times as an "undesirable" organization, criminalizing our work and putting our staff at risk of prosecution. This follows our earlier unjust labeling as a "foreign agent."
These actions are direct attempts to silence independent journalism in Russia. The authorities claim our work "discredits the decisions of the Russian leadership." We see things differently: we strive to provide accurate, unbiased reporting on Russia.
We, the journalists of The Moscow Times, refuse to be silenced. But to continue our work, we need your help.
Your support, no matter how small, makes a world of difference. If you can, please support us monthly starting from just $2. It's quick to set up, and every contribution makes a significant impact.
By supporting The Moscow Times, you're defending open, independent journalism in the face of repression. Thank you for standing with us.
Remind me later.
