VORONEZH – Russian president Dmitry Medvedev broke off his summer holiday yesterday and flew back to Moscow for emergency talks as the death toll from Russia’s deadliest wildfires in nearly four decades hit 48.
Thick clouds of acrid, choking smoke from forest and peat bog fires blanketed the capital. Authorities told residents to stay indoors despite the sweltering heat to avoid concentrations of toxic carbon monoxide well above safe levels.
Keen to stamp his authority on the government’s response to the fires – so far largely handled by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin – Mr Medvedev sacked several senior navy officers for failing to stop forest fires from ravaging a storage base outside Moscow last week and destroying valuable equipment.
“Despite the fact that we asked the defence ministry to help with extinguishing fires to help the civil population, in the majority of cases the ministry cannot [even] protect itself,” Mr Medvedev told officials in the Kremlin after returning from his Black Sea summer residence at Sochi.
The fires have swept through Russia’s tinder-dry forests in the hottest summer since records began 130 years ago, leaving thousands homeless and prompting leaders to declare a state of emergency in seven regions.
The wildfires are Russia’s deadliest since 1972, when at least 104 people died in the Moscow region alone in forest and peat fires. – (Reuters)