The big forest fire season has started earlier than usual in Russia, especially in the Urals. Experts fear that the summer of 2023 will be catastrophic in this country where the means of the State are mainly directed towards the war in Ukraine.
Russia is entirely turned towards the west and the war in Ukraine. But to the east, behind him, the forest is burning. More than 100,000 hectares of vegetation have gone up in smoke this spring, just in the Sverdlovsk region, around Yekaterinburg, in the Urals. Sometimes affecting inhabited areas, these fires caused several deaths.
As a result of the heat and lack of water for the season, since the beginning of June June, other fires have been reported further east, in Siberia, in Altai. “We already know that the season will be worse than usual,” predicts Grigory Kuksin, the founder of the Center for the Prevention of Forest Fires, a Russian NGO. Because “the weather forecast is bad”
Fires with sometimes unexpected consequences
He further explains that “the situation is aggravated by the fact that many bog fires have not yet been extinguished” and it won’t be “may not be possible to do”, he dreads. Bog fires, also known as “zombie fires”, sometimes survive the winter under the snow and come back to life in the summer. They could help make 2023 a season comparable to 2021, the worst the country has seen.
This year, “after these forest fires in central Yakutsk, in the fall there were floods”recalls Nikita Tananaev, a researcher at the Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk, Siberia. “Because when the forest fire passes, there is ash left and therefore the water does not penetrate the ground, it remains on the surface. Our soils become hydrophobic. This causes flooding”, he explains.
“Almost half of Russian forests are not protected against fire at all because there is no money for it.”
Grigory Kuksinfranceinfo
The means to fight against these fires are sorely lacking and many fires are not even treated, according to Grogory Kouksine. “I would say that we still have the same shortage of personnel, money and equipment on fires. This was already the case in previous years, but many companies producing firefighting equipment left Russia. And we end up with equipment of insufficient quality.”
The federal state, whose budget is in deficit for the first time in years because of the war in Ukraine, does not plan to strengthen the means of fight, leaving the regions alone to face these huge fires.