The 2022 Siberian wildfires were a series of wildfires in Russia that began in Siberia in early May 2022. Fires were concentrated in the Krasnoyarsk, Altai,

Irkutsk Irkutsk ( ; rus, Иркутск, p=ɪrˈkutsk; Buryat language, Buryat and mn, Эрхүү, ''Erhüü'', ) is the largest city and administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. With a population of 617,473 as of the 2010 Census, Irkutsk is ...

Kemerovo Kemerovo ( rus, Ке́мерово, p=ˈkʲemʲɪrəvə) is an industrial city and the administrative center of Kemerovo Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Iskitimka and Tom Rivers, in the major coal mining region of the Kuznetsk Ba ...

Omsk Omsk (; rus, Омск, p=omsk) is the administrative center and largest city of Omsk Oblast, Russia. It is situated in southwestern Siberia, and has a population of over 1.1 million. Omsk is the third largest city in Siberia after Novosibirsk ...

, Kurgan regions, Khakassia and

Sakha Sakha, officially the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia),, is the largest republic of Russia, located in the Russian Far East, along the Arctic Ocean, with a population of roughly 1 million. Sakha comprises half of the area of its governing Far Eas ...

republics.

Overview

Possible causes of fires are careless handling of fire during picnics on May holidays, short circuits of power lines and substations or fires of dry grass. Three employees of the power distributor Krasnoyarskenergo have been arrested and charged with manslaughter. As of 11 May, 1,298 buildings in 60 settlements burned down, including 200 homes, and at least 13 people died, including one child. In the city of Krasnoyarsk, the authorities had found that the fine particle concentrations in the air has exceeded levels considered hazardous to human health due to the smoke from wildfires. An

civil association account stated on Twitter that the governor of the region is busy holding pro-Putin festivals and there is no clear action from the regional Emergency Situations Ministry. President of Russia Vladimir Putin urged authorities to take stronger actions to prevent further spread of wildfire. It is argued that they are uncontrolled due to resources diverted for the

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...

. Smoke from the wildfires reached the western United States and worsened air quality on the coast of California.

Further fires in 2023

The total area of fires in 2023 was estimated at 5.2 million hectares. On 3 July 2023 a state of emergency was declared in Russia's far east. More than 110 forest fires were burning across 62,000 hectares.

References

{{2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine 2022 wildfires Wildfires in Russia 2022 disasters in Russia May 2022 events in Russia Natural disasters in Siberia

Overview

Further fires in 2023

See also

References