Burning Russia: who is to blame for the forest fires?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

This is a short description of just one small episode of extinguishing a large fire on the border of Moscow and Ryazan regions this summer. It is impossible to compare it with the Siberian ones, but with the same in 2010 the smoke of Moscow began. It began exactly the same way - the shooting at the military range led to a fire. That is, for nine years, no one has decided to stop setting fire to the ground with shells.

Fires in Siberia began from the so-called zones of control. These are the territories for which a decision was made - it is not clear why - not to extinguish, but only to observe. And it is also believed that there are no settlements in these zones (this is not true, they are there).

In Russia, millions of hectares of forest are burned annually. Read it carefully! Millions of hectares of forest. And they treat this every year in almost no way. Since 2015, regional authorities have had the legal right not to do anything at all about fires in control zones. After all, if the officials decided to put out the fires when they were still small, when it was still possible to reach them, this catastrophe would not have happened. Now the situation has become extremely complicated. The fire has gone far into the forest, it is already very difficult to reach it, it is even more difficult to extinguish it.

And now I’m going to say things that everyone doesn’t like. The situation now must be rescued by the people in the offices. They should stop telling citizens with a grin that they had the right not to extinguish. We must stop juggling with numbers trying to prove that there was even more fire last year. We must stop pushing responsibility on each other. We must begin to make decisions that will lead to the elimination of the disaster, and not to the preservation of the budget and positions. There is no need to pretend that in general everything is in order, but the weather let us down. The weather was only a factor, not a cause.

And here it is important to remember something else. The current catastrophe has also been caused by society. Let's call a spade a spade. As long as there is no smoke in the settlements, support for firefighting work is minimal. And this work is not at all heroic, it is difficult, painstaking, daily. Do you know why Moscow is not in smoke now? This is also because volunteer forest firefighters constantly monitor the thermal points, compare them with a map of peat bogs, go out to check and extinguish (sometimes together with official services, and sometimes without them) small fires at the very beginning. Firefighting work is work about petitions and requests to the authorities, about constant prevention, about classes with children, about creating cartoons, about training volunteers, about the simple "Don't burn the grass!" This is all together and gives the result.

Why are you suggesting that we sign the petition, because we want to go to extinguish! This is the most widespread reaction now to a request to help us put pressure on the authorities so that they begin to make decisions to save the situation.

We invite you to participate in fighting fires so that your assistance is effective and safe. Being a hero and rushing headlong somewhere with calls or calling, but not participating yourself - this is a story that has never led to anything good. Imagine: you come somewhere (exactly somewhere, because where exactly to go, almost none of the callers knows), there is a fire 150 kilometers from the settlement, you can only get there by aviation. That's all, this is where your extinguishing ended. And if you were able to get to the fire, then in front of you is a wall of fire, falling trees and a very high speed of fire propagation. This is more likely to end your life (more on how volunteers put out fires).

If the authorities knew how to work with volunteers for real, and not only in beautiful forums with flags, everything could be organized. It is very difficult to extinguish upper forest fires (namely, they are now in Siberia), here a man with a bucket will not help. But it is possible to protect settlements and parts of the forest that are still untouched. For this, for example, mineralized strips are dug, including without the use of heavy equipment. And they are “fired” from them in the direction of the fire, so that the fire has nothing to “feed on” when it comes to this territory. And if the authorities built the work of citizens in this direction, explaining why they need to dig a ditch where it doesn’t burn, and why it’s impossible to “fire off” on their own, without the involvement of specialists, it would be possible to do a lot of fire-fighting work.

Today, only truth and action can help residents of smoky cities and burning forests

This is why we urge you to sign the petition. Telling the truth about the dangers of smoke is very important for the health of those who now live in this smoke. Remember how they lied to us in 2010 that smoke from fires is not harmful to health, and the numbers of mortality and morbidity have seriously increased? We must demand constant air monitoring, accurate, undistorted data. And people should know what and when to take measures - to limit physical activity, to be outdoors less, to do wet cleaning at home more often, to ventilate the premises only when the smoke passes, and so on.

The forces and means that the state has can and should now extinguish everything that can be reached. But when you are asked in the news to rejoice that the superplane will finally fly to dump water, wait to rejoice. This is not a magic wand or a computer game. Even the largest and most powerful aircraft, with very accurate water discharge, can only dampen the fire line. And there cannot be an infinite number of such aircraft. Aviation is suitable for the delivery and evacuation of groups of firefighters, for monitoring and reconnaissance, but it cannot cope with such fires only by dumping water.

Now about 5 billion rubles a year are allocated to protect forests from fires in Russia. And this is about 10 times lower than the amount that is really needed. It is necessary to demand that the budget be much larger, this is a very important item of expenditure, which will allow avoiding annual disasters.

And the last thing. "Forests are constantly burning - this is how nature works." Let's make a rough estimate. There are three natural causes of fires: a dry thunderstorm, a meteorite fall and a volcanic eruption. Everything. All other fires are man-made. (There was also a paragraph about how the Chinese do not set Russia on fire every year, your neighbors and acquaintances do it, but you still won’t believe me until you see it with your own eyes.)

All three causes of natural occurrence of fires are rare, and if only because of them it was burning, fires would occur a thousand times less often and I would not write this text. In many regions, the fire passes through the same squares every two to three years. All this was not laid down by nature, although man is now an integral part of it.

There are few volunteer firefighters in Russia, much less than necessary. They need more, and the existing ones need your help. By subscribing even to a small monthly donation - 100, 200, 500 rubles - you will help Greenpeace train volunteer firefighters and provide them with equipment and protective equipment. And that means - to save the forests and the people who live next to them.