Smog from spreading Russia fires chokes Moscow

Stuart Williams Yahoo News 6 Aug 10;

MOSCOW (AFP) – A noxious smog from spreading wildfires choked Moscow Friday as Russia moved to protect military and nuclear sites from the relentless march of its worst ever blazes that have already killed 52 people.

The defence 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 residents and tourists, many wearing masks, wheezed as they made their way round the city in the thickest smog to hit the capital since Russia's worst heatwave in decades broke out in July.

The capital's most famous landmarks like the spires of the Kremlin towers or the onion domes of Orthodox churches were largely invisible from a distance. Some flights at its Domodedovo international airport were being diverted.

"I woke up this morning, looked out of the window and saw a monstrous situation," declared President Dmitry Medvedev. "We all want this heatwave to pass but this is not in our hands, it is decided above."

He called on Moscovites to show patience, although he acknowledged "we're suffocating, you can't breathe".

The emergencies ministry said the total area ablaze was down slightly at 179,600 hectares (444,000 acres) and for the first time it was putting out more fires than were appearing.

The fires have claimed the lives of 52 people, the ministry of health said Friday 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 12 kilometres (six miles) into the stratosphere.

A particular worry for the Russian authorities has been fires around the city of Sarov in central Russia which houses the country's main nuclear research centre. 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 centre and the emergencies ministry has assured the public it has the situation under control.

The defence ministry meanwhile ordered weapons, artillery and missiles at a munitions depot at Alabinsk, about 70 kilometres (45 miles) southwest of Moscow, to be transferred to a secure site.

Military prosecutors said Friday that a fire on July 29 had destroyed a paratroops base outside Moscow, the second confirmed case of the wildfires hitting a major strategic site.

Medvedev has already warned Russia's top two naval commanders and sacked a string of officers for failing to halt a fire last week that destroyed 13 warehouses and 17 storage areas at a naval logistics base.

Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu said his forces were also working flat out to prevent the fires spreading to the Bryansk region in western Russia where the soil is still contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

"The government should pay a great deal of attention to the protection not only of military bases and science towns but to these places as well," said Nikolai Shmatkov of the World Wildlife Fund, Interfax reported.

However French experts said inhalation of smoke and fumes posed a greater health problem than any radioactivity released in the air.

"The radioactivity in these woods isn't sufficient to pose health problems. If the forests burn, then local residents will be exposed to two times the normal radiation," said Jean-Rene Jourdain, a researcher at France's IRSN nuclear safety institute.

Russia's chief doctor Gennady Onishchenko said 78 children's holiday camps had been closed due to the heatwave and smoke and 10,000 children taken home to their parents.

The mortality rate in Moscow soared by 50 percent in July compared to the same period last year, according to Yevgenia Smirnova, an official from the Moscow registry office.

Germany has closed its embassy in Moscow until further notice because of the smog, a foreign ministry spokesman said Friday.

Travel agents reported that all the package holidays abroad for the coming weekend had been snapped up by Muscovites desperate to escape their smog-filled city, the Interfax news agency reported.

The country is also facing a severe drought that has destroyed 10 million hectares of its arable land and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday banned exports from the world's third wheat exporter until year end.

Planes diverted, offices close as smoke chokes Moscow
* Pollution levels in Moscow soar to five times normal
* Planes diverted, office workers sent home
* Acrid smoke blankets Red Square

Amie Ferris-Rotman and Conor Humphries Reuters AlertNet 6 Aug 10;

MOSCOW, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Dense clouds of acrid smoke from peat and forest fires choked Russia's capital on Friday, seeping into homes and offices, diverting planes and prompting exhausted Muscovites to wear surgical masks to filter the foul air.

Air pollution surged to five times normal levels in the city of 10.5 million, the highest sustained contamination since Russia's worst heatwave in over a century began a month ago.

"It feels like I`m in a burning house and I can`t escape," said Yelena Petrenko, 32, who used a handkerchief to cover her mouth because drugstores she visited had run out of facemasks.

Officials urged Muscovites to stay indoors because of the dangerous levels of carbon monoxide and fine particles in the air. Weather forecasts said the smoke, which has reached even underground metro stations, would persist until Monday.

On Red Square, smoke shrouded the onion domes of St Basil's cathedral. The weekly changing of the guard ceremony in the Kremlin was cancelled for Saturday.

NASA satellite images showed a 3,000 km-long (1,850 mile) smoke cloud covering swathes of European Russia.

Moscow temperatures reached 36 Celsius (96.8 Fahrenheit) on Friday, breaking a daily record for the fifth straight day.

The deadliest wildfires in nearly four decades have killed at least 52 people and left more than 3,500 homeless as entire villages of wooden homes burned down, official figures say.

The true toll from the smoke and heatwave may be much higher. Interfax news agency quoted an "informed source" on Friday saying death rates in Moscow surged nearly 30 percent in July because of the "disastrous heat and smoke cloud".

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has been silent on the smoke engulfing his city. A city government spokeswoman said he had left on holiday earlier in the week.

One of the world's top grains producers, Russia has announced a temporary ban on exports after crops were ravaged by the dry weather. The news sent world wheat prices soaring.

Despite a huge effort involving more than 160,000 people fighting fires, authorities appeared to be losing the battle.

The size of peat fires burning in the Moscow region almost doubled from 37.5 hectares on Thursday to 65.7 hectares on Friday, the regional Emergencies Ministry branch said.

The emergency has prompted the country's enfeebled opposition to complain of poor fire safety readiness and a slow, ineffective government response.

President Dmitry Medvedev visited an ambulance station in Moscow on Friday and expressed solidarity with smoke-choked Muscovites.

"I woke up this morning and looked around -- it's a monstrous situation," Medvedev said. "Have patience, because I hope this will all end."

AIRCRAFT DIVERTED

Russia's state-controlled media have been at pains to show a vigorous government effort to fight the blazes and have avoided detailed reporting on the hazards to health.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has toured fire-stricken regions promising generous compensation to residents and ordering officials to step up efforts to extinguish the blazes.

The government has warned that the fires could pose a nuclear threat by releasing radioactive particles buried in trees and plants by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

A senior Emergencies Ministry official, Vladimir Stepankov, said the most difficult fire situations were in the regions ringing Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, including the closed town of Sarov, home to a nuclear arms facility.

Russia's nuclear chief on Thursday assured Medvedev that all explosive and radioactive material had been removed.

Sarov's firefighting headquarters said firefghters were trying to extinguish two blazes inside the perimeter of the closed city on Friday, while soldiers cut firebreaks in a burning forest to the south, state-run news agency RIA reported.

The first Soviet nuclear weapon was made in 1949 in Sarov at the Institute of Experimental Physics, which remains the main nuclear design and production facility in Russia.

With visibility low, Russia's aviation authority said at least 60 planes had been diverted to as far away as Ukraine from Moscow's busy airports. Flights and trains out of Moscow were booked solid as residents tried to flee the smoke.

Office workers were sent home as smoke crept into buildings. A spokesman for Russia's No. 1 retailer X5 said all 1,500 staff were ordered home.

"I can smell smoke right here in the office," an employee at a bank, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.

A trader at another bank said smoke had entered the building and staff were given permission to leave. (Additional reporting by Alexei Anishchuk, Nastassia Astrasheuskaya, Maria Plis, Dmitry Sergeyev and Andrey Ostroukh; writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman, Michael Stott and Steve Gutterman; Editing by Alison Williams and Mark Heinrich)