FIRE – Russia is hot, very hot. Since mid-July, the country has experienced a wave of heatwaves and it is not without consequences. This heat causes many fires in the taiga. As of July 19, Reuters counted 187 fires covering 51 residential areas. Nearly 800,000 hectares of forest have already gone up in smoke. Siberia is particularly affected.
Cities like Yakutsk are suffering the consequences of these fires. They have been suffocating in the smoke for several days. “I have heard stories of people who have had a lot of problems, who are breathless, they cannot move around the city, it is too difficult for them, they are suffocating”, told AFP, Viktor Kulagin, Russian student.
Every year, fires ravage Russia’s forests, but they have intensified in recent times due to unusually high temperatures in northern Siberia. The Kremlin attributes these forest fires to global warming.
See also on The HuffPost: In the United States, the “Bootleg fire” has already devoured the equivalent of 130,000 football fields
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