Residents told to stay indoors as Chernobyl wildfires rage

KYIV residents were told to shut their windows and stay indoors yesterday after thick smoke from wildfires in the Chernobyl exclusion zone blanketed the Ukrainian capital.

The authorities insisted, however, that the blanket of thick yellowish smoke, which came in from forest fires smouldering in the area around the now defunct Chernobyl nuclear power station, was not a health hazard.

Described as the worst blazes since the 1986 explosion at the power station, the fires that raged for nearly two weeks were put out on Wednesday.

Several patches of the forest, however, were still smoking when high winds ignited new, albeit smaller fires, on Thursday afternoon.

Kyiv, a city of 2.9million, was hit by an unusual dust storm on Thursday afternoon, attributed to a warm and dry spring, before the smoke came in at night. Residents reported the stench of burning outside, and Kyiv authorities asked people to shut the windows and stay at home. However, they insisted that radiation levels remained normal.

Ukraine’s Emergency Situations Service said yesterday that there was no open fire in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, just multiple areas of smouldering grass and wood.

But Greenpeace Russia reported three new fires around Chernobyl, citing satellite data. The spread of the fire earlier this month made many Ukrainians worried that the government may want to hide what was happening, as Soviet officials did more than 30 years ago – failing to report the explosion for two days until winds carried radioactive particles to western Europe, where experts eventually raised the alarm.

Vitali Klitschko, the Kyiv mayor, went to the area yesterday to meet the firefighters.