Environmentalists have developed a new plan to fight fires in the Chornobyl zone

Large-scale fires that engulfed the Exclusion Zone last year and destroyed hundreds of hectares of land have forced society to reconsider its attitude to environmental issues. After all, when Ecological Topic becomes the subject of manipulation, there are huge risks of missing a large-scale threat to the entire Europe for a number of smaller information reasons. This opinion was reached by the participants of the briefing, that took place on the initiative of the Professional Association of Ecologists of Ukraine. "For years, we have witnessed a situation where Ukrainians, instead of preventing a catastrophe, suffer from the consequences. When some environmental issues sink into the flow of other manipulative topics, the process of shifting responsibility takes precious time away. It's time to look at the challenges comprehensively and with maximum responsibility of everyone. After all, when a fire breaks out, something or someone (in most cases) provoked it", said Lyudmyla Tsyganok, president of the Professional Association of Environmentalists of Ukraine.

That is why environmentalists have called for a plan to help create a systematic, coherent and unified approach to fires. This plan will be available to all agencies and enterprises in the Exclusion Zone and those involved in firefighting, and it will be the basis for the allocation of budget funding. "The plan will include a description of the strategy to prevent large fires in the Exclusion Zone, a description of the tasks to be solved, a description of risks, dangers, responsibilities and interaction between agencies and individual enterprises. The key parts of the plan will be analysis of current and past situation. Tools for the implementation of the plan will be improved regulatory support, a set of organizational and management measures, improved budget funding, staff training, including personal safety measures, training of firefighters at various levels, as well as widespread use of modern information technologies for monitoring fire risks, ensuring preparedness, detection and extinguishing of fires ", - explained Sergiy Zibtsev, Professor of Forestry at NUBiP of Ukraine and Head of the Regional Eastern Europe Fire Monitoring Center.

A large-scale fire broke out in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone on April 4. About a thousand specialists and several hundreds of special equipment fought with it. But the fire engulfed more than 30,000 hectares, destroyed part of the "Red Forest", 12 abandoned villages and the military town of Chernobyl-2. But the worst thing is that the fire approached the outskirts of Pripyat and the Pidlisny radioactive waste storage facility. The cause of the large-scale fire was called deliberate arson. Two people suspected of the crime were detained.

Source: Open Forest, Maria Shevchuk