Wildfires in Russia raise fears that radioactive fallout from Chernobyl could spread

Russian wildfires raise radiation fears

MOSCOW — Russian emergency workers have increased forest patrols in a western region affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, trying to prevent wildfires that could potentially spread harmful radiation, officials said Wednesday.

The Emergency Situations Ministry’s branch in the western Bryansk region — the area of Russia that suffered worst from the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe in what was then Soviet Ukraine — had spotted several wildfires in the area over the past few days and quickly extinguished all of them, spokesman Irina Yegorushkina said. She said radiation levels remained normal in the region that borders Belarus and Ukraine.

Large swaths of land were contaminated in the Bryansk region when Reactor No. 4 exploded during a pre-dawn test on April 26, 1986, at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, spewing radioactive clouds over much of the western Soviet Union and northern Europe.

Radioactive particles settled into the soil, and environmentalists have warned that they could be thrown up into the air by wildfires and carried to other areas by winds.

Russia’s Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu acknowledged the danger last week. Officials insisted they are taking all precautions.

“We had several fires, but the situation here is not as difficult as in the areas around Moscow,” Yegorushkina told The Associated Press.

She said that a team of radiation experts from Moscow has conducted a thorough check of the area and concluded that there has been no increase in radiation levels.

Vladimir Rozinkevich, the head of the forest protection service for the Bryansk region, said it has increased patrols around the forests, particularly in the southwest of the Bryansk region affected by the Chernobyl fallout.

“There is a danger, but we are controlling the situation,” he told the AP.

Greenpeace and other environmental groups have said that if raised by fires, radioactive dust from the Chernobyl disaster would spread radiation that could be harmful, even though doses will likely be small.

Hundreds of wildfires sparked by the hottest summer ever recorded in Russia have engulfed large areas around Moscow and other parts of western Russia, cloaking the Russian capital in suffocating smog for a week.

Emergency oficials say that about 165,000 people and 39 firefighting aircraft are battling blazes nationwide.