Several fires in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, extinguished the day before due to rain, flare up again to the stage of open fire due to strong winds.
Yaroslav Emelianenko, a member of the public council of the State Agency of Ukraine for the Management of the Exclusion Zone, reported this on his Facebook, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Fires have resumed in the Chernobyl zone. A sandstorm fans smoldering fires into open flames in many places. There are also new fires in the biosphere reserve near Dityatki.
I really hope that this time there will be an immediate reaction from the state, without delay. Moreover, budgets have been allocated for extinguishing,” Emelianenko wrote.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Ukraine, as of 17:00 on April 16, notes that the fires are not of a threatening nature.
“However, due to squally gusts of wind in the second half of the day, the situation became more complicated and three new smoldering centers appeared, which are not large-scale and do not have a threatening nature,” rescuers report.
In the video from the entrance to the Exclusion Zone at the Dityatki checkpoint, published a few hours earlier on the Facebook page “Artefact art-project,” you can see the sky gray to the horizon and how powerful gusts of wind raise clouds of dust.
Also commenting on the emergency was ex-deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of previous convocations Alexey Zhuravko.
“The situation there is now getting worse, the wind is strong, there are three outbreaks. The firefighters are having problems with the fire trucks again; they thought they had put out the fire, and some of the fire trucks left. Now cars are being collected from nearby areas. There is a problem with water, a problem with provisions, a problem with fuel, a problem with suits. The headquarters is barely working, many don’t want to go.
All this can be assessed as carelessness, mismanagement, stupidity of officials, incorrect decisions. Zelensky was set up once again, they couldn’t localize the fire,” Zhuravko told PolitNavigator.
“Of course, it’s sad to see what’s happening. Then we will say that the reserve is empty in order to eliminate such emergency situations. Here are all the signs of the collapse of the state, incompetent people have come. Most importantly, the firefighters already had no money, but today the Prime Minister spoke and told how he allocated an additional hundred million for firefighting. Imagine, all over Ukraine! Although, before there were 256 million. These hundred million, one might say, were spread across Ukraine. Again, illiterate economic activity represented by the Cabinet of Ministers,” stated the former deputy.