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About 100 people evacuated from Siberian village amid major fire

The fire poses real threat to the settlement of 202 residential houses

IRKUTSK, May 18 /ITAR-TASS/. About 100 people, including 40 children, have been evacuated from the settlement of Dalny in Russia’s Siberian Irkutsk region because of a major fire caused by agricultural burning.

“Local residents were brought to the settlement of Zamorsky on a motor boat. Some of them will be accommodated at a temporary accommodation centre, others will stay at their relatives,” an officer on duty at the local operations control service told Tass on Sunday.

According to Sergei Yuriev, the fire poses real threat to the settlement of 202 residential houses. The settlement is veiled in smoke, while winds up to 15 meters per second contribute to the fire. The administration of the neighbouring Zamorsky settlement said they were ready to accommodate more than 400 people.

A Be-200 multipurpose amphibious plane and a Mi-8 helicopter of the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations are ready to join efforts to put out a fire in the settlement of Dalny, but unfavourable weather conditions ground them at the moment, sources from the regional centre of the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations say.

According to Sergei Yuriev, an officer on duty at the local operations control centre, the whole settlement is veiled in smoke despite a strong wind. The wind is forecasted to intensify further. At the moment, seven houses are engulfed in flames.

As of 21:00 local time (16:00 Moscow time) on Sunday an emergency session of the regional government started, to look into the situation.

All in all, 45 people assisted by six units of hardware are putting out the fire. A voluntarily fire brigade from the settlement also works at the site. A Mi-8 helicopter of the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations’ Siberian centre was dispatched to the site.

This is a second major fire in the Irkutsk region over the past 24 hours. Three houses were destroyed by blaze in the town of Zheleznogorsk-Ilimsky earlier on Sunday. Both fires came because of negligence, in which the fires from agricultural burnings spread to residential houses amid strong winds.

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