Siberia: State of Emergency Declared Over Wildfires

Facts

• Authorities in Siberia declared a state of emergency on Monday, as more than 110 forest fires raged across an area of about 75% of the area of New York City amid unusually intense heat and thunderstorms.¹
• On Monday, Interfax news agency reported that 620 personnel and 33 ground vehicles and planes were involved in extinguishing blazes over 61K hectares in the Republic of Sakha. The area is home to roughly 1M people — authorities say there are no immediate threats to any settlements.¹
• There are concerns that the fires in Siberia — which have taken 16 lives in recent weeks — may end up being the worst ever recorded in the region. According to acting Emergencies Minister Aleksandr Chupriyan, this year has already seen some 1.3K buildings destroyed by around 4K wildfires.²
• The rising number of forest fires in Eastern Russia and Siberia has led local authorities to allocate more funds to the problem. The head of the Republic of Sakha, Aysen Nikolayev, told President Vladimir Putin in May that the region had tripled its firefighting budget this year.³
• Environmentalists have warned that fires burning through the tundra, north, and south of the Arctic Circle, are destroying permafrost and peatlands in the regions, releasing millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. According to Greenpeace Russia, wildfires caused the destruction of 18.8M hectares of boreal forest in the country in 2021.⁴
• This comes as Canada also continues to battle its own wildfires across the country. Official government graphics show extreme fire danger in regions including around Hudson Bay — just south of the Arctic Circle.⁵

Sources: ¹Reuters, ²RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty, ³Al Jazeera, ⁴Travel And Tour World, and ⁵CBS.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by CNN. The clock is ticking as shown by recent events in Canada and Siberia. Wildfires in the northern latitudes are a time bomb of carbon being exacerbated each year, that have already released record-high levels of planet-warming emissions into the atmosphere. Wildfire-triggered greenhouse emissions must be addressed as part of the ongoing climate crisis.
• Narrative B, as provided by NBC. While climate change could be one of many factors in this situation, the best way to handle wildfires in northern latitudes is to practice better forest management. Decades of mismanagement have led to extraordinary quantities of dry timber — it's time to clean out this threat through better policies and practices.

Predictions