Large fires in Siberia raise alarm for season

MOSCOW — Spring wildfires across Siberia have Russian authorities on alert for a potentially devastating summer season of blazes after an unusually warm and dry winter.

Some of the April fires in eastern Russia have already dwarfed the infernos at this time last year, which ultimately roared through 7 million acres in total — more than the size of Maryland — and sent smoke drifting as far as the United States and Canada.

Siberia also is among the areas of the world showing the greatest temperature spikes attributed to climate change. This year, the average temperatures since January are running at least 5.4 degrees above the long-term average, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, Russian Natural Resources Minister Dmitry Kobylkin said “this year’s summer [in Russia] may be one of the abnormally hottest in history, or if not the most abnormally” hot.

Warming trends in Siberia are melting permafrost, which releases vast amounts of planet-warming greenhouse gases.

Russia’s emergency situations minister, Yevgeny Zinichev, described the recent fire situation in Siberia as “critical.”

In Krasnoyarsk, about 2,500 miles east of Moscow, recent fires were 10 times larger than this time last year, he said. Farther to the east, in the Transbaikal Territory, the fires were three times larger.

Wildfires are an annual spring and summer occurrence in Russia — nearly half of the vast country is covered in forest. But last year, the burn zones grew so large that military aircraft were dispatched to battle the blazes in August.

This year, the coronavirus, which has infected more than 260,000 people in Russia and devastated the economy, could further complicate the country’s response.

“We expect that there could be catastrophic fires in Siberia,” said Greenpeace’s Alexey Yaroshenko, adding that the wildfire peak isn’t expected until July or August.

Sergei Anoprienko, head of the federal forest agency, said during an online news conference Friday that by mid-April “the number and area of forest fires exceeded the figures of the same period last year.”

At the moment, the fires have been stabilized, Anoprienko said. He pointed to the country’s coronavirus lockdown as partly to blame, saying that some people who were supposed to be self-isolating “went out and violated fire safety rules in the forest and adjacent areas.”