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Fire fighters in Yakutia (on Saturday)
Photo:
Ivan Nikiforov / AP
Because of massive forest fires, Russian authorities have declared a state of emergency with the national nuclear research center in the city of Sarov.
The step is necessary because the fire is spreading in the Nizhny Novgorod area and additional forces could be mobilized to extinguish the fires, said the administration of the shielded city.
That is where Russia's nuclear research center is located.
Locations threatened by fire in many other regions of Russia as well.
The region of Yakutia in north-eastern Russia was particularly hard hit.
There in the Sakha Republic, as in a total of eight regions, there was a state of emergency.
More than 30 houses burned down in the Yakut village of Bjass-Kjuel.
The people were brought to safety.
According to the authorities, the fire is spreading rapidly due to high wind speeds and threatens several villages, including the Sangar settlement with oil stores.
In the Siberian regions of Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk, entire cities were shrouded in smoke, as can be seen on pictures on Russian state television.
Almost 7,000 fire fighters were deployed across the country.
According to information from the authorities, around 3.5 million hectares across the country were in flames on Sunday - this corresponds to the area of Baden-Württemberg.
The expert Grigori Kuksin from the environmental organization Greenpeace spoke on the Echo Moskwy radio station about the worst forest fires in the history of Russian weather observation.
“That has to do with the increasing climate change.
The season of the risk of forest fires is getting longer, the droughts occur more frequently, last longer and are more intense, ”said Greenpeace forest expert Alexej Yaroshenko.
He criticized the lack of laws, money and personnel to protect the forest.
more on the subject
Forest fire monitoring: The world is on fireBy Frank Patalong
Forest fires in southern Europe: Athens suffocates in smoke and ashes
Greenpeace is calling for more foresters and volunteers to be deployed and for citizens to be educated about fire protection.
The environmentalists repeatedly complain that many fires are caused by people and - despite warnings about the danger of forest fires - campfires are lit in the dry forests.
In the region bordering China around the great Amur River, the authorities have meanwhile struggled with floods after massive rainfall.
Among other things, more than 80 kilometers of roads and six bridges have been flooded and 24 villages have been cut off from the outside world, said Alexander Selenin, Minister of Transport for the Amur region.
The district administration announced that a state of emergency had been imposed in the Svobodnensky district.
fdi / dpa
