Russia beats back fires as heat wave gives way to storm

RUSSIA yesterday said it was beating back the country’s worst ever wildfires, including one close to a secret nuclear site, as thunderstorms and torrential rain drenched parts of the parched country.

The peat and forest fires in central Russia have killed more than 50 people and raised concerns about the security of potentially dangerous strategic sites.

A huge worry has been fires in a nature reserve close to Russia’s main nuclear research centre in Sarov – a town closed to foreigners – but the authorities said they had taken a major step to resolving the crisis.

The emergencies ministry said that the fire, in the district of the village of Popovka, 17km southeast of Sarov, which had extended to 1,000 hectares at the weekend, had been “localised and ringed-in”.

Nationwide the area affected by wildfires had been reduced by another 8,000 hectares to 45,800 hectares, the ministry said.

At the peak of the crisis, an area of almost 200,000 hectares was in flames.

Officials over the past days sought to downplay the true scale of the disaster. “The situation is stable and controllable. There are no fires on the territory of Sarov,” said the head of the emergencies ministry’s branch for the Volga region, Igor Panshin.

The federal government has yet to confirm that daily mortality rates in Moscow doubled due to the heatwave and smog.

Moscow, with temperatures fallen to 29 degrees Celsius, was braced for torrential rain after tens of thousands in northwest Russia were left without electricity overnight when a storm ripped through the region.