Moscow under threat of new summer disaster: wildfires and clouds of smog can be worse than in 2010

There are high chances that wildfires can break out across the Moscow region and in the capital itself this summer, experts say. The catastrophe can even beat the one that hit the western regions of Russia in 2010.

The Moscow region’s authorities and the Federal Forestry Agency have already issued a warning about a high risk of wildfires across vast territories of the region. There is much deadwood, they say, resulted from the bark beetle outbreak. The situation is aggravated by burned trees which have not been removed from forests after the 2010 wildfires, ecologists say quoted by the Kommersant newspaper.

By the current moment in the Moscow regions there have been registered 13 fires with the area of less than 4 ha. But the situation can get worse and end in clouds of smog brought into the Russian capital if peat fires on the border of the Moscow region with other Russian regions will not be taken under control in the near future.
Russian EMERCOM has said the current situation is not critical and assured the 2010 crisis is unlikely to happen again.