Winds of change blow in Moscow
Source: Agencies |
August 13, 2010, Friday
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THE skies were clear over Moscow yesterday, giving residents a desperately needed break from air pollution thanks to favorable winds and some success in fighting wildfires that have choked the Russian capital with clouds of acrid smog.
People walked through the streets without the masks that have become ubiquitous. The towers of the Kremlin and domes of Orthodox cathedrals could be seen without the yellowish veil that's shrouded them for a week.
"I can finally open the balcony door to let my cat warm in the sun," said economics student Evgeniya Lavrova, 21. "You walk in a street, feel a light breeze and want to breathe again."
Weather experts warned that the smog could return over the weekend after winds change again, but chief of Russia's main weather service, Roman Wilfand, said that the unprecedented heat wave that has tormented Russia for most of the summer would end next week.
The Emergency Situations Ministry said yesterday that the area engulfed by fires around the capital has shrunk by more than a quarter over the past 24 hours. It said firefighters have also managed to significantly reduce the size of fires in other parts of Russia, but 562 fires covering over 80,000 hectares were still burning.
The ministry said all wildfires in areas contaminated by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster have been quickly extinguished and radiation levels have remained normal.
Environmentalists and forest experts have warned that radioactive particles left over from the Chernobyl catastrophe could be thrown into the air by wildfires and blown into other areas by the wind.
Hundreds of wildfires sparked by the hottest summer ever in Russia have engulfed large areas and Moscow's death rate has doubled to 700 people a day. City officials said morgues have been overflowing.
A Dutch-based environmental group, Wetlands International, said on Wednesday that the suffocating smog over Moscow had been generated mostly by fires in drained peatlands near the Russian capital. It said that despite their relatively small area, such fires cause the worst pollution and are extremely difficult to extinguish.
The group welcomed Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's call for rewetting the drained peatlands as the only efficient way to prevent such fires in the future. The water had been drained so people could extract the peat and burn it for fuel.
The governor of Moscow region, Boris Gromov, said yesterday that work already is under way to flood the bogs with water. He said that it would require laying a total of 300 kilometers of water pipes.
Despite some success in combatting the fires, residents of two villages southeast of Moscow were evacuated yesterday because of advancing fires raging nearby, the regional police said.
People walked through the streets without the masks that have become ubiquitous. The towers of the Kremlin and domes of Orthodox cathedrals could be seen without the yellowish veil that's shrouded them for a week.
"I can finally open the balcony door to let my cat warm in the sun," said economics student Evgeniya Lavrova, 21. "You walk in a street, feel a light breeze and want to breathe again."
Weather experts warned that the smog could return over the weekend after winds change again, but chief of Russia's main weather service, Roman Wilfand, said that the unprecedented heat wave that has tormented Russia for most of the summer would end next week.
The Emergency Situations Ministry said yesterday that the area engulfed by fires around the capital has shrunk by more than a quarter over the past 24 hours. It said firefighters have also managed to significantly reduce the size of fires in other parts of Russia, but 562 fires covering over 80,000 hectares were still burning.
The ministry said all wildfires in areas contaminated by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster have been quickly extinguished and radiation levels have remained normal.
Environmentalists and forest experts have warned that radioactive particles left over from the Chernobyl catastrophe could be thrown into the air by wildfires and blown into other areas by the wind.
Hundreds of wildfires sparked by the hottest summer ever in Russia have engulfed large areas and Moscow's death rate has doubled to 700 people a day. City officials said morgues have been overflowing.
A Dutch-based environmental group, Wetlands International, said on Wednesday that the suffocating smog over Moscow had been generated mostly by fires in drained peatlands near the Russian capital. It said that despite their relatively small area, such fires cause the worst pollution and are extremely difficult to extinguish.
The group welcomed Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's call for rewetting the drained peatlands as the only efficient way to prevent such fires in the future. The water had been drained so people could extract the peat and burn it for fuel.
The governor of Moscow region, Boris Gromov, said yesterday that work already is under way to flood the bogs with water. He said that it would require laying a total of 300 kilometers of water pipes.
Despite some success in combatting the fires, residents of two villages southeast of Moscow were evacuated yesterday because of advancing fires raging nearby, the regional police said.
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