Forest fire around Chernobyl: measurements cause bad surprise - "bad news"

A forest fire broke out on Saturday evening in the restricted zone area around the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant. An increased radioactivity is said to have been measured there.

• A forest fire broke out in the exclusion zone around the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant .
• According to the emergency services, the fire was brought under control.
• Increased radioactivity has now been measured in the area.

Chernobyl - In the exclusion zone around the former Ukrainian Chernobyl nuclear power plant , a forest caught fire on Saturday. As a result, increased radioactivity has been measured on site. Rescue workers had previously said otherwise.

Forest fire broke out in Chernobyl exclusion zone - increased radioactivity measured

The fire broke out on around 25 hectares of forest in the restricted area on Saturday evening. Around 140 firefighters, two fire engines and a helicopter were then deployed and tried to extinguish the fire. This was announced by the civil protection in Kiev on Sunday. However, the population was not in danger, it said. There are always fires in the forests in the exclusion zone.

Increased radioactivity has now been measured in the affected area. Yegor Firsow, head of the state environmental inspection service, informed on Sunday on Facebook: "There is bad news: radioactivity is above average in the center of the fire." The head published a video in which a Geiger counter showed 16 times the normal value Firsow went on to say that the fire had spread over 100 hectares.

Chernobyl: forest fire causes increased radioactivity

On Saturday, the authorities still spoke of "difficulties" in fighting the fire due to the increased radioactivity. On Sunday morning, however, the Ukrainian emergency services announced that no increased radioactivity was found.

After the explosion of unit four in the Soviet nuclear power plant in Chernobyl in 1986, radioactive areas around the nuclear ruins were closed. Tens of thousands of people have been forcibly resettled, and commercial farming is still prohibited in the area today.

Recently a group of adventurers from near Regensburg caused a stir with a trip to Chernobyl - they made a shocking discovery there, as merkur.de * reports.

nz with dpa / afp

* merkur.de is part of the nationwide Ippen-Digital editors network.

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