Chernobyl Wildfire Keeps Burning

Massive wildfires have been raging close to the exclusion zone at Chernobyl for the past two weeks, sending clouds of potentially radioactive smog into Kyiv.

The Air Quality and Pollution City Ranking said Kyiv had the dirtiest air in the world Thursday, measured at 380. With a rating of 180, Shenyang, China, was the city with the second poorest air quality. 

An Information Warfare Specialist living in Kyiv, Dmytro Zolotukhin, said: “The air literally stinks. People feel uncomfortable when breathing.”

The Ukraine’s Health Ministry has warned that the acrid smoke can cause headaches, coughs, difficulty breathing and inflammation.

Fires have been burning in the Chernobyl exclusion zone since April 4, initially engulfing around 2000 acres. Three days later, the fire had doubled in size. 

The environmental group Greenpeace tweeted: “Wildfires near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant have already become the largest in the existence of this exclusion zone. These fires are extremely dangerous because radionuclides located in the upper soil layers might be released into the air”.

Chernobyl became the site of the worst nuclear accident in history when in April 1986, the reactor at the power plant exploded near the now-abandoned town of Pripyat, causing large quantities of radioactive material to disperse into the atmosphere. 

The Chernobyl wildfires come amid the coronavirus crisis, urging many Ukrainians to resort to apocalyptic statements in their social media posts. The Ukrainian news site Euromaidan Press wrote on its Facebook page: “Many today are wondering which one of the Egyptian plagues will come next”. SLIXY

Germany has sent more than £200,000 worth of aid to help the country prevent a calamity in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where at least six fires are burning. 

By Elene Dzebisashvili