This content was published on August 11, 2021 – 09:47
Moscow, Aug 11 (EFE) .- Forest fires affect an area of just over 4 million hectares in Russia today, according to data provided by Avialesojrana, the Russian federal agency for aerial surveillance of forests.
Most of the active forest fires, 172 out of 257, are concentrated in the republic of Yakutia, in the extreme east of Russia, the largest federated entity in the country, with an area of just over 3 million square kilometers.
According to Avialesojrana, in Yakutia fires cover almost 3.9 million hectares, and only 1.44 million hectares are actively working to extinguish them.
Russian legislation establishes that work to quell forest fires in remote or hard-to-reach areas can be suspended if they do not pose a danger to towns and economic infrastructures and the cost of their extinction exceeds the damage they may cause.
Smoke from the forest fires in Yakutia has spread across the Russian Far East, in particular into the neighboring Krasnoyarsk region.
The low visibility today forced to delay 27 flights from or to the Emelyanovo airport, in the city of Krasnoyarsk, capital of the homonymous region, the Interfax agency reported.
The Krasnoyarsk Emergency Department said in a statement that yesterday, Tuesday, excessive levels of smoke were registered in 896 cities and villages in the region and in its capital it smelled of burning.
According to Avialesojrana, since the beginning of the year in Russia there have been 11,878 forest fires that have devastated 8,336,302 hectares, an area that does not include that of active fires.
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