Smoke from Russian fires blankets Moscow

[Jan Klimkowski]

Fears Russian wildfires could send Chernobyl waste to Moscow

Ecologist says radioactive particles from trees and plants burnt by summer fires in the Chernobyl fall-out area could be carried on the wind for hundreds of miles

Forest wardens stepped up patrols in the Chernobyl fallout zone today as a leading ecologist warned that fires there could send radioactive particles as far as Moscow.

About 160,000 emergency personnel are battling 600 wildfires across Russia, 290 of which ignited in the last 24 hours.

Greenpeace said that at least 20 fires, three of them in a highly contaminated forest area, had broken out in recent days in Bryansk region, bordering northern Ukraine. Bryansk was part of the zone sprayed with a plume of radioactive isotopes caesium-137 and strontium-90 when the Chernobyl power plant's fourth reactor exploded in 1986.

Alexei Yablokov, an ecologist and member of the Academy of Sciences, warned that winds could spread contaminants embedded in trees and plants as they succumb to the inferno.

"Radionuclides may reach places at distances of hundreds of kilometres, depending on the weather," he said. "If the Bryansk region is in flames, they can reach the Novgorod region, Moscow, and in some conditions, eastern Europe."

There were conflicting reports over the extent of the fires in Bryansk. Asked about the gravity of the threat, Gennady Onishchenko, the country's top public health official, said: "There's no need to sow panic. Everything is quiet there."

But Russia's forestry protection service said it was increasing patrols in the area after about 30 hectares of land went up in flames. "The situation is complicated, but stable and controllable," an official from the service told Interfax.

Greenpeace played down fears of Chernobyl pollution reaching Moscow, but said the harmful potential of smaller doses of radiation combined with smog, carbon monoxide and other particles should not be overlooked.

A veil of acrid smog lifted from Moscow on Tuesday morning but temperatures remained in the 30s Celcius (86+F) as political repercussions of the wildfires crisis emerged.

There was growing evidence that the absence of the city's powerful mayor during its hour of need could hasten his demise.

Yury Luzhkov left for holidays and "treatment for a serious sports injury" as the city sweltered on 2 August and did not return until Sunday, several days after a toxic cloud enveloped the city. A senior health official has said the smog killed at least 320 more people each day than usually die in the city.

Luzhkov, in office since 1992, is the last of the regional heavyweights in Russian politics, but his future as city boss has looked increasingly fragile amid allegations of sleaze and incompetence.

Prime minister Vladimir Putin greeted the tanned-looking mayor in a televised meeting yesterday, saying: "You were quite right to return from your vacation. Your timing is perfect."

Observers interpreted those comments as an acid hint that Putin disapproved of Luzhkov's late showing. "Luzhkov underestimated the political situation and he underestimated how serious and tense the situation in Moscow is," said Gleb Pavlovsky, a political analyst with close ties to the Kremlin.

"Surely, he is in a very weak position now and worsened it even more by saying, amid all that is happening, that the situation in Moscow is quite normal."

Before Luzhkov returned, his spokesman, Sergei Tsoi, had claimed there was little reason for the mayor to cut short his break because there was no emergency. The fires causing Moscow's smog were outside the capital, Tsoi said, and therefore "nothing depends on the city authorities in dealing with the current environmental situation".

Luzhkov, 73, denied rumours that he was getting treatment in Tyrol, Austria, but declined to say where he had been.

Deputy mayor Vladimir Resin made a clumsy attempt to exonerate his boss, saying he had a backlog of 370 days of holiday. "He could have taken a whole year off," he said.

But a Kremlin source said it was "too bad" Luzhkov hadn't returned from holiday sooner. "The mayor's absence obviously did not help the necessary decisions to have been made in timely fashion," he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug...-radiation