A wildfire covering an area of approximately 130 hectares is burning in the exclusion zone on the premises of the 'Chornobylska Puscha' specialized forestry enterprise, Ukraine's State Emergency Situations Service said in a press release on June 30 morning.
“Dry grass and reed caught fire in the exclusion and unconditional (obligatory) relocation zone on the premises of the ‘Chornobylska Puscha’ forestry enterprise, near the village of Kovshylivka and the urban-style settlement of Poliske in the flood plain of the Uzh River, at 5.10 p.m. on June 29. Individual spots of the fire have spread over an area of around 130 hectares,” it said.
As many as 117 people and 24 units of hardware, including 82 specialists and 13 units of equipment provided by the State Emergency Situations Service, are working to extinguish the blaze.
A firefighting coordination center and a mobile group headed by the deputy chief of the emergencies service’s branch for the Kyiv region are working at the site. The first deputy director of the State Emergency Situations Service is overseeing the effort.
It is the second major fire in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone in the past few months. On April 28, a blaze erupted on the premises of the ‘Chornobylska Puscha’ forestry enterprise near the villages of Buriakivka, Rudnia-Ilinetska, Hlynka and Lubianka of Ivankivsky district. The fire burning on an area of 320 hectares was contained on April 29. It was extinguished on May 2.
The press service of Ukraine’s State Emergency Situations Service reported on May 21 that radiation levels in Kyiv and the exclusion zone surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were within safety limits.
