Moscow, July 10, (dpa/GNA) – Severe forest fires in eastern Russia are continuing to spread, with the Yakutia region in the Sakha republic particularly affected.
Some 158 fires were burning, across 440 hectares of forest, the forest protection agency said on Friday. The area has been under a state of emergency for days.
Across Russia, there are 336 forest fires, affecting more than half a million hectares of woodlands, the officials said.
Some 7,000 people and dozens of aircraft are trying to contain the fires, they said,
Hundreds of people in the Chelyabinsk region in the Ural Mountains had to be brought to safety as towns were evacuated as the fires spread.
Officials said in Yakutia, an Antonov An-26 aircraft strafed clouds in order to artificially generate rain. Bombarding the clouds with special cartridges, silver iodide was released, triggering a chemical reaction in the clouds and creating rain, according to their report.
There is a great deal of smoke in the air in Yakutia, where the situation is of growing concern, according to environmental organization Greenpeace.
Greenpeace also sent volunteer firefighters to help the Lena Pillars national park in the region. Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012, it is currently shut.
Climate change is aggravating Russia’s forest fires, according to Greenpeace’s forestry campaigners, who said the heat waves are unusual, with dry thunderstorms and lengthy droughts. However, most of the fires are caused by people, with only a few generated by lightning strikes, they said.
Forest fires break out annually in Russia. In Yakutia alone, around 6 million hectares of forest burned down last year, of a total area of 256 million hectares, according to the authorities.
GNA