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Forestry enterprise in Minsk region ready to tackle wildfires

A BelaPAN correspondent joined a group of reporters to travel to a rural area near the town of Uzda, Minsk region, to check whether a local forestry enterprise is ready to fight wildfires amid a record-breaking heatwave.

It was a rainy day in the woody area some 40 kilometers south of the Belarusian capital but the enterprise’s firefighting station had everything in readiness for dealing with a possible blaze.

The station has eight fire engines and a total of 10 staff, said local official Syahey Syankevich. Equipment pieces at the station far outnumber its personnel, with some 100 shovels kept in its warehouse.

Forests in the area are criss-crossed by swathes of cleared land that secure access to burning areas and slow down the spread of fires.

Mikalay Razhkow, the local chief forest officer, said that authorities had created a special barbecue area. “There are arbors, garbage containers there. This helps us control forest visits,” he said.

Forestry Minister Mikhail Amelyanovich, who accompanied reporters on the trip, said that more than 400 forest fires had been reported in Belarus this summer, with forestland occupying a total of 300 hectares destroyed by the blazes.

“The art of putting out forest fires is detecting them in time and extinguishing them when they are still small,” he stressed.