JOIN USRussia tries to bar blaze from N-site
Forest and peat fires by the highest temperatures ever registered in Russia have killed at least 52 people, made more than 4,000 homeless, diverted many flights and forced Muscovites to wear surgical masks to filter out foul air.
“The fire situation in the Moscow region is still tense, but there is no danger either for residential areas or for economic sites,” an Emergencies Ministry spokesman said.
Weather forecasts said the smoke, which has reached even underground metro stations, would persist until Wednesday.
Echo Moskvy radio station said army troops excavated the canal to prevent the flames from advancing into the Sarov nuclear arms facility, ringed by forest in the Niznhy Novgorod region, 350 km east of Moscow.
The Emergencies Ministry said the situation in Sarov had “stabilised”. Sarov is a closed town whose nuclear site produced the first Soviet atomic bomb in 1949.
Precaution
On Thursday, Russia’s nuclear chief assured President Dmitry Medvedev that all explosive and radioactive material had been removed from the nuclear site as a precautionary measure.
Air pollution surged to more than six fold over the normal reading in Moscow, a city of 10.5 million, the highest sustained contamination since Russia’s worst heatwave in over a century began a month ago.
Many people on the streets of Moscow were wearing masks to ward off the heavy smog, while suffering from sweltering heat as the temperature climbed to 36°Celsius, verging on the record high for the day.