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Minister: No country faced such challenges as Russia’s Far East with fierce blazes

"Now the crucial thing is to protect people’s lives and their health," Minister for the Development of the Russian Far East and Arctic Alexei Chekunkov stressed

MOSCOW, August 19. /TASS/. No country in the world has dealt with such challenging, ferocious wildfires as Russia’s Yakutia has this year, Minister for the Development of the Russian Far East and Arctic Alexei Chekunkov stated on Thursday.

"No country in the world has experienced such challenges [as Yakutia]. An area of almost 7 mln hectares is on fire; this is the size of an average European country, millions of football fields. <...> Now the crucial thing is to protect people’s lives and their health. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to protect property," Chekunkov told the Rossiya-24 TV channel.

The Russian minister urged the authorities to consolidate their work in order to prevent such disasters in the future.

"We must protect each settlement in such a way that the fire does not reach them. [We should] preventively monitor terminal points, use earth sensing methods, work cohesively to pinpoint wildfires from space and use all data systems in order to identify fire centers at the earliest stage and, if possible, localize them," Chekunkov noted.

Yakutia is one of Russia's most fire-prone regions. Since July 1, 2021, residents are banned from visiting any woodland areas, while a regional state of emergency has been introduced there since the fire spread to populated communities and economic facilities. Furthermore, Yakutia and the Irkutsk Region introduced an interregional state of emergency on August 13 amid the forest blazes.

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