Black skies over Siberia as wildfires rage around the world’s oldest lake

Federal and local routes are disrupted, residents complain they fear getting burned alive while driving through the blazing taiga near to Lake Baikal. 

Thousands of firefighters and volunteers are out in woodland in the Irkutsk and the Trans-Baikal regions of Eastern Siberia, desperately seeking to extinguish the infernos. 

Russian Consumer rights watchdog RosPotrebNadzor issued a warning to the locals, calling on them to keep windows shut at all times, to wear damp masks and drink a lot of water. 

Officials of the Irkutsk region limited access to forests on most of its territory to everyone but fire brigades. 

‘I was rushed to hospital with acute asthma attack after spending evening outdoors’, said an angry resident from Ulan-Ude, the largest city in the Republic of Buryatia. 

‘As you go out everything is colour grey, the sun and blue sky are blanketed out by smoke.’

‘Its impossible to breathe, woods all around us are burning, villages are burning, people are sure to lose houses again! I only wish that they survive!! Shop attendants in the city wear masks, this is awful’, wrote Inna Shishkina from Irkutsk. 

Forty five forest fires are currently active around Irkutsk; twenty were extinguished overnight according to the local officials.  

The state of emergency hasn’t been called in all of the Irkutsk region yet, despite the area of wildfires growing twofold to 18,000 hectares in the last two days.  

Some of the fires were caused by extremely dry and windy weather, yet most of them started because the so-called ‘spring burns’ went wrong. 

These are the controlled burns of old grass, that are supposed to put nutrients back into the soil and revitalize the land. 

The Ministry of Emergencies for Irkutsk region will be seeking help from the phone companies to get locations of everyone who was either in, or close to epicentres of every wildfire in an attempt to bring people to justice.