A fire broke out Saturday and engulfed 20 hectares in a forested area near the Chernobyl power plant. Radiation spiked 16 times above normal by Sunday. Kiev has integrated two planes, a helicopter, and around 90 firefighters to fight the blaze, the civil protection agency in Kiev said on Saturday. The service said that increased radiation in some areas made it difficult to fight the fire while stressing that people living nearby were not in danger. On Sunday morning, the emergency service said in a statement that the fire was not visibly burning and there was no increase in radiation in the air. Ukrainian authorities on Sunday reported a spike in radiation levels in the restricted zone around Chernobyl caused by a forest fire.
A reactor in Chernobyl exploded in April 1986, polluting a large area of Europe. Three other reactors at Chernobyl continued to generate electricity until the power station finally closed in 2000. A giant protective dome was put in place over the exploded reactor in 2016.
The head of Ukraine’s state ecological inspection service, Yegor Firsov, said on Facebook on Sunday that this is bad news as radiation levels are above normal in the fire’s centre. The post included a video with a Geiger counter showing radiation at 16 times above normal. “The fire has spread to about 100 hectares (250 acres) of forest”, Firsov wrote.
>Juthy Saha
