Emergencies, Disasters and Scandals, Oh My!

After deadly fires ravaged central Russia last summer and choked Muscovites with smog, people are starting to ring the alarm ahead of the spring thaw, realizing that nothing is being done to prevent new fires from engulfing yet more forest and villages.*

Greenpeace experts from the Moscow office said that, unlike previous winters, peat bog fires this year have continued to burn well into January, despite being beneath a thick cushion of snow. This means the fires could restart as early as April. Meanwhile the Emergency Situations Ministry assured the public that the fires have all been extinguished.

From Mikhail Shlyapnikov’s blog. He lives in a Ryazan oblast village.