This season of wildfires has begun unusually early in Russia, but it was not something frightening until early May. Typically there are few wildfires per week in a region, and they don't affect every region. However, an especially dry year along with careless use of matches and cigarettes during two national festivals in May caused fire activity to inevitably skyrocket, especially in the East of Russia.

In the Primorye region in the far east, the number of forest fires tripled over May 2 and 3. In Siberia, the areas of forest fires doubled to more than 1,500 hectares between May 5 and 6. Furthermore, between May 1 and 6, 37 forest fires started in the Khabarovsk region and 18 started in the Irkutsk region.

The hot, drought-stricken weather in eastern Russia also became windy. During the 24-hour period of May 10 the number of fire occurrences reached an unprecedented scale.

• In the Khabarovsk region, the number of forest fires more than doubled, from 35 to 76.
• In far eastern Russia, wildfire totals rose from 93 to 153, with 16,500 hectares under fire. Ten of these fires reached large sizes.
• In Siberia, forest fires have doubled in this period. They doubled again the following day.
• In the Krabarovsk region, 120 bulldozers and tractors and 10 helicopters were used in firefighting.
• In the Chita region, burned areas grew ten-fold to 1,200 hectares.

Serghey Pyrkov, dispatcher for the Far East Forest Protection Aviation Base, stated that 90% of wildfires were caused by human action, but also mentioned numerous ignitions along railroads.

“On Friday we managed to extinguish 25 forest fires, but at the same time got 36 new ones,” he said.

In the Irkutsk region 3,500 hectares of forests were on fire on May 11. Approximately 35 airborne firefighters, 500 other personnel and 100 technical units were employed in firefighting operations. An emergency situation was declared in three districts and appeals were broadcast via the media to the public not to go into the forests.

May 12 brought about 158 new fires in the far east regions. Areas of burning forests grew up to 33,000 hectares, and to 55,000 hectares a day after. Firefronts came within two to three kilometers to a number of villages.

Forest fires also threatened railroad facilities. In response, the Far East Railroad Division dispatched 30 fire trains and 20 fire engine crews for suppression of forest fires approaching railways.

In addition, conflagrations destroyed old-growth relic forests in the far eastern regions and highly valuable conifer stands in the south of Siberia.

On May 14, the Ust-Kada village in the Irkutsk Region was completely encircled by a forest fire, and the Kolbinskoye village in the Krasnoyarsk region was threatened by a wind-driven firefront.

The situation was so harmful that the Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin demanded Minister for Emergency Management Serghey Shoygu present a report on forest fires and the state of the national forest firefighting resources on May 15. The minister said that the number of wildfires was nearly the same as a year ago, but the areas burned were almost five times larger.

According to information from the Ministry of Natural Resources, from the start of the fire season through May 26, more than 10,300 wildfires occurred nationwide — up 3,500 from a year ago — and burned 278,000 hectares of forests. Of those fires:

• 70% were human-caused, including profit-aimed arson.
• 48% took place in Siberia and the far eastern regions.
• 90% of fires were controlled by ground forces. The remaining 10% were controlled by aerial resources.
• About 100,000 ground personnel participated in firefighting.

Village destroyed by fire

A wildfire led to almost complete destruction of Borovoye, a village in the Irkutsk Region, on May 15. A sudden gust of stormy wind threw a shower of embers upon the village, and houses we engulfed in only a few minutes.

The only source of water, a wooden reservoir tower, quickly caught fire and collapsed. Residents were defenseless against the blaze and couldn't call for help because the village's telephone line was lost four years ago.

The residents fled to the only safe place — a plowed field — and stayed there, watching the inferno demolish their homes and all of their property in a half hour. Firefighters, rescue rangers and an operational emergency management team arrived at 4 a.m. the following day and found that of the 76 houses only 15 survived, and of the 220 residents, 133 people became homeless.

An investigation revealed that the firefront came from a forest fire propagating toward a nearby Burluk village. Firefighters prepared a control line and set a backfire, but a sudden wind shift turned the fire aside and whipped up the flames. The new head of fire went crowning and in 30 minutes covered a 10km distance to Borovoye.

New cause of fire found

Wildfires were usually attributed to human negligence, careless agricultural burning and vandal ignitions of dry grass. But Russian forestry and emergency management officials found many forest fires were due to other causes.

The first identified cause is connected to the harvesting and selling of fern sprouts in the spring. Russia exports these sprouts to Japan and China. Fern sprouts often grow amidst grass, but fern pickers learned to remove the grass by burning it to make reaping easy.

The second identified cause relates to the extermination of a blood-sucking bug that may infect humans with encephalitis. In the spring, the forests of Siberia and the far eastern regions teem with these bugs, and considerable numbers of forest visitors have been hospitalized after being bitten. No economical way has been found to suppress this species without harming wildlife, so those people whose income depends on the accessibility of the forests sometimes burn the forest floor to kill encephalitis bugs.

But a more appalling cause of mass forest fires surfaced in this season: commercial arson. Police investigations have revealed that many ignitions in Eastern Siberia and the far eastern regions were organized by private logging companies to obtain cheap contracts for salvage logging of charred tree stands.

In these regions, many small logging companies are controlled by criminal organizations. They hire teenagers or vagabonds to set fire in valuable forest plots. In mid-May, three teenagers were caught by foresters while placing lighted matches on the forest floor in the Usolsky district of the Irkutsk region.