Wildfire area in Siberia doubles in past 24 hours

As of Friday morning, he said, there were 133 wildfires on an overall area of 16,039.9 hectares. Fire fighting operations involve 2,677 specialists from the Russian forestry authority, emergency ministry and voluntary firemen, and 487 units of hardware, including 39 aircraft.

The most difficult situation is reported in the Krasnoyarsk territory, where there are 46 fires, including 11 large-scale ones, on a total area of 13,510 hectares, of which 12,555 hectares are forest fires, and 955 hectares - steppe fires.

Emergency situation regime has been imposed in two districts, Kezhemsky (1,940 hectares seized by fires) and Boguchansky (10,800 hectares).

"The large-scale fires were initially reported as thermally active spots, which later grew in size," the spokesman said.

Aircraft of the Siberian regional emergencies centre discharged 33 tons of water over the past day. As many as 301 fire inspections in forests were conducted, which yielded 50 administrative cases on charges of violations of fire safety rules. A total of 1,417 stationary and mobile posts have been installed to restrict entry to forest zones.

Moreover, fire lines to a total length of 12 kilometers have been made around settlements. In all, more than 18,000 kilometers of such lines have been ploughed around populated localities since the beginning of this year's fire season. "There is no threat to settlements," the spokesman concluded.