Some 300 firefighters battling deadly blazes in Russia’s Siberia
Several fires have broken out in southern Siberia, affecting about 200 buildings and causing at least five deaths, local authorities said on Saturday, adding they had placed the area under a state of emergency.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .The fires in the Krasnoyarsk region covered more than 16 zones, spreading to around 200 buildings, several sawmills and a children’s playground, the regional ministry for emergencies said on Telegram.
Authorities said some 300 firefighters and 90 vehicles were battling the blazes.
“Extinguishing (the fires) is being complicated by meteorological conditions — violent winds are fanning the flames and preventing them from being put out,” the ministry stated.
Siberia has suffered from large scale fires for some years. Last year, they belched 16 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere, according to an annual European climate report.
Svitlana Salamatova and Anna Sushko, both founders of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) focused on women’s issues and education, fled the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv soon after Russia invaded the country on Feb. 24.
Another of the women, Anastasiia Konovalova, left her home in Odesa with her toddler son. Svitlana Gollyak and her 8-year-old daughter hid in a basement in the bomb-shelled city of Kharkiv before heading westwards and on to neighboring Romania.
Despite their ordeal, the women quickly looked for ways to use their skills to help fellow refugees, setting up a kindergarten and several classrooms for Ukrainian children in Bucharest with help from local NGOs, volunteers and officials.
“I crossed the border with my three-year-old son and everything I was thinking about was how to save my child from a city that was bombed,” Konovalova told Biden, herself a teacher.
“Thank God the Romanian people were here. I think even the Romanians didn’t expect that they could be so wonderful, because you don’t expect that from people,” Konovalova said.
