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Forest fires near Chernobyl still not under control – fire fighting in the contaminated area endangers the firefighters

Forest fires have raged around the damaged Chernobyl nuclear power plant for days. The emergency services do not get them under control.

A forest fire rages near the village of Volodymyrivka in the restricted area around the damaged Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Yaroslav Yemelianenko / EPA

(dpa) Firefighters still have no control over the forest fires surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, more than a week after the outbreak. With the support of airplanes and helicopters, more than 300 emergency personnel fought the flames on Saturday, as the civil protection agency said. The limit values ​​for radioactive radiation were not exceeded in the neighboring populated areas, the zone administration assured.

The authorities made no statements regarding the current extent of the fires. On Saturday, they only referred to satellite images from last Sunday, according to which an area of ​​around 2400 hectares within the restricted area was on fire. The fires had broken out the day before. Environmentalists fear that radioactivity will be released. The smoke also reached the capital Kiev, about 100 kilometers away, at the weekend.

Many wonder how dangerous the fires in the restricted area are. The nuclear expert Heinz Smital from the environmental organization Greenpeace spoke of a “critical situation”. Five years ago, fires in the exclusion zone had shown that “considerable amounts of radionuclides were released”. He had no current data yet. “It’s a dangerous thing for the fire department.”

However, the authorities assert that no increased radiation was measured in the neighboring populated areas. But what about near the fires? The managing director of the environmental authority, Yegor Firssow, wrote on Facebook: “There is bad news – in the center of the fire, radioactivity is above the norm.” Environmentalists warn, because whirled up radioactive particles could be carried by the wind for miles.

How large the fires really are could be shown by satellite images that Greenpeace has evaluated. According to this, instead of a few dozen hectares in the exclusion zone alone, up to 20,000 hectares, or almost seven percent of the entire area, could burn. According to the authorities, it burns in 18 forest sections. However, they no longer specified a specific number for the fire area. The concrete sarcophagus of the atomic ruin was already covered in smoke on Friday.

Wladimir Demtschuk from the civil defense service described the extinguishing operation as difficult: “I would like to emphasize that one of the special features of the extinguishing work in the restricted area is that the technology cannot drive to individual sources of fire.” There is increased radioactive radiation on individual sections.

The administration of the restricted area appealed to the police to investigate arson. A 27-year-old has already been targeted by the investigators. The convicted man from an adjacent town confessed to having started a fire. He had lit leaves and dry grass out of boredom, the police said.

In Ukraine, the fire service is not only used in the Chernobyl area. Nationwide there are hundreds of open fires in an area of ​​20,000 hectares. Only for the coming Tuesday do meteorologists forecast more rainfall. It is not yet clear whether they will only bring a respite or the end of the fires.

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