Firefighters put out 18 forest fires over the past 24 hours in Russia’s Siberia, but the situation with wildfires still remains serious in the region, a forestry department said on Wednesday.
“There are 30 active forest fires covering an area of 2,650 hectares in the Karsnoyarsk and Tomsk regions as well as in the republics of Tuva and Khakassia,” the department said in a statement.
Last month NASA quoted Greenpeace as saying that this year's wildfires are worse than in 2010, when they engulfed most of central Russia, choking the populous region with acrid smog.
Also in July, smoke from wildfires in the taiga east of the Urals accounted for some spectacular sunsets in western Canada and the United States
More than 200,000 hectares of forest already burned down in Siberia and the Russian Far East since the start of the summer.
