If you're anything like me, the last place you'd expect to hear about wildfires is in russia. For me when I think about Russia I think about a cold snowy climate with open fields. But that's not the extreme heat waves and drought which are most likely as a result of climate change have caused devastating wildfires. These massive wildfires can affect nearly 1.5 million hectares and have already burned 62,000 square miles in one of the coldest places on earth, Yakutia. This town ~3000miles away from Moscow has had such large wildfires that its smoke has reached as far as Alaska and North pole. Other than smoke drifting thousands of miles the region is not new to droughts but never anything like this scale. Unfortunately for the people of Yakutia they are under equipped in terms of manpower and equipment. Since they only have a fraction of the resources they need Yakutian Branch of Federal Aerial Forest Protection Service Senior Pilot-Observer to send small teams to keep the large fires away from the local villages. The Senior Pilot-Observer Kolesov said “There are too many fires and pretty much all of them are major.”.It's gotten so bad that Yakutia has declared a state of emergency. Since 2017 the area surrounding Yakutia has had some unusually dry summers. For example in a normal year the people of Yakutia could expect to see around 2 major fires a year this year they received 30 to 40 major fires. Another scary fact is that according to Russia's emergency services they are fighting nearly 200 fires across Russia. And what's worse is these fires are not just impacting Russia according to the EU Copernicus satellite 505 megatons of co2 have been released because of the fires.
Article link:https://abcnews.go.com/International/siberian-wildfires-now-bigger-fires-world-combined/story?id=79422602
-Anthony Kindness
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