A noxious smog choked Moscow yesterday as Russia moved to protect military and nuclear sites from the relentless spread of its worst ever wildfires, which have killed 52 people.
The Russian defense ministry ordered the evacuation of missiles from a depot outside Moscow, as the authorities warned of the risk of fires reactivating contamination in an area hit by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Moscow commuters, many wearing masks, wheezed as they made their way to work in the worst smog to hit the capital since the fires broke out more than a week ago. Experts said the pollution was four times above safe levels.
The emergencies ministry said the total area ablaze was down slightly at 179,600 hectares, but there were still 588 fires across the affected region in European Russia and 248 new fires had appeared over the last 24 hours.
The fires, the worst on record in Russia, have claimed the lives of 52 people, the Ministry of Health said yesterday in an updated toll. The emergencies ministry called for volunteers to join the firefighting efforts.
NASA images have shown the fires are easily visible from space and the US space agency said the smoke had at times reached 12km into the stratosphere.
“The pyrocumulus cloud and the detection of smoke in the stratosphere are good indicators that the fires are large and extremely intense,” it said.
Fires around the city of Sarov in central Russia are a particular worry for Russian authorities, as the city houses the country's main nuclear research center. It is still closed to foreigners, as in Soviet times.
The Russian nuclear agency has said that all radioactive and explosive materials have been removed from the center and the emergencies ministry has assured the public it has the situation under control.
The defense ministry, meanwhile, ordered weapons, artillery and missiles at a munitions depot at Alabinsk, about 70km southwest of Moscow, to be transferred to a secure site.
Russian Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu said his forces were also working flat out to prevent the fires spreading to a region in western Russia where the soil is still contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster.
“We are painstakingly controlling the situation in the Bryansk region. If a fire appears there, the radioactive particles could fly away with the smoke and a new polluted area could appear,” he said.
Moscow's most famous landmarks, such as the spires of the Kremlin towers or the onion domes of Orthodox churches, were largely invisible from a distance.
“It's a serious reason not just for the aged, children and pregnant not to go out into the street, but also for people in good health,” said Yevgenia Semutnikova, head of local pollution watchdog Mosekomonitoring.
The mortality rate in Moscow soared by 50 percent last month compared with the same period last year, said Yevgenia Smirnova, an official from the Moscow registry office.
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