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Russia battles devastating fires

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Russia is enduring its most severe heat wave on record. The scorching temperatures have set off hundreds of ravaging wild fires. In the last 24 hours firefighters have put out nearly 300 fires. But more are flaring up. Reporter Jessica Golloher reports from Moscow. (Photo: Ilya Varlamov)
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• Slideshow: See Reporter Jessica Golloher’s photos
• BBC slideshow: Russian forest fires: Your pictures
• BBC Video: First hand account of Russian’s escaping the fires
• More photos from Ilya Varlamov’s LiveJournal

A fire in the village Kadanok (Credit: Ilya Varlamov’s YouTube page)

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DAVID BARON: There’s a thick haze over Russia’s capital. A lingering heat wave, with temperatures above 100 degrees, has set off hundreds of wildfires across the country. Today, President Dmitri Medvedev sacked some top military officials for failing to stop a fire from destroying a naval base outside Moscow. Russian authorities are struggling to contain the blazes, but as Jessica Golloher reports, many residents feel they’ve been left to cope on their own.

JESSICA GOLLOHER:  Anya Kirilova’s face is covered in soot, her clothes are filthy and her hair is slicked back with sweat. As she looks out across her family’s property, a fire blazes about 300 feet away. The only thing that separates her family’s summer home from the flames is a two foot wide trench she and her father dug themselves. She says they tried to get the fire department to come and help them.

ANYA KIRILOVA:  Before we even couldn’t reach them by the phone, like not forest government company, not fire company. They just didn’t answer the phone. We called them maybe ten times, like every half an hour, and they just said okay, we just couldn’t do anything. We have only two cars, like blah, blah, blah.

GOLLOHER: The family’s dacha is near Pavlovo Pasad, in the Moscow region, just 42 miles away from the capital. Valarey Gevardarsky of the 110^th Fire Brigade says he understands Kirilova’s frustrations, but he’s in charge of seven other regions and he only has four fire trucks. And only two of them carry water.

RUSSIAN SPEAKING

VALAREY GEVARDARSKY: Trucks have to spit out the water, then go back and refuel, making putting out the fires even more difficult.

GOLLOHER: It’s not just the lack of equipment. Gevardarsky adds that Russia doesn’t have enough qualified firefighters to begin to tackle the hundreds of fires that have been breaking out across the country every day.

RUSSIAN SPEAKING

GEVARDARSKY: If we had more people, we’d get better results. It’s not easy to find people qualified to fight fires. So we’ve been rounding up civilians, temporary workers to help us. We get about ten a day. We don’t have enough people to help us.

GOLLOHER: The Kremlin has been recruiting hundreds of thousands of volunteers to help battle the blazes. Valery Tarasav is one of them. He’s wearing shorts, no shirt and flip-flops. As he smokes a cigarette, he throws a bucket of water on flames encroaching on a house in Kirilova’s neighborhood.

RUSSIAN SPEAKING

GOLLOHER: He says I’m not here to think. I’m just here to do. Our President has asked for our help today in protecting what’s ours. I built a house here. I’m here to protect my home and family. President Medvedev cut short his summer vacation to return to Moscow to chair an emergency meeting. Authorities are now acknowledging that they can’t get all the blazes under control. Emergency Situations minister, Sergei Shoigu, stopped short of saying that the country lacks adequate equipment and manpower to battle the blazes, but he did say Russia will buy new equipment to deal with future fires.

RUSSIAN SPEAKING

GOLLOHER: He says eight planes will be bought in the next two years and that Russia will most likely make three squadrons. One for the Far East, one for Siberia and one for the Moscow region. Other helicopters will also be included. Back in Pavlovo Pasad, Anya Kirilova says those promises do her no good. She needs help now.

KIRILOVA: In the United States, when I was there, I lived in some dormitory. And it was some guys tried to cook popcorn in microwave and it was a lot of smoke indicators react on this and fire machines came in five minutes. They just told us to leave the building. They did everything, checked everything. I felt safe there even though my country was abroad. And our country’s government, it’s not their dacha, it’s not their forest. They don’t care.

GOLLOHER:  For The World, I’m Jessica Golloher, Pavlovo Pasad, Moscow region, Russia.

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