On August 6 Wildfire Today reported that the government of Russia had issued warnings about a potential danger if any of the hundreds of fires in their country burned lands that were contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. Now there is a report that at least 28 fires covering 269 hectares (664 acres) occurred on the radioactive lands in the Bryansk region. A second report says 39 square kilometers (9,600 acres) have burned in areas polluted with radiation.
Radiation experts from Moscow conducted an evaluation of the area and concluded there has been no increase in radiation levels. But earlier this month when a wildfire burned through a Russian military base, their defense ministry initially denied reports of the fire and at first even denied that the Navy base existed. Later Russia’s Prosecutor General’s office confirmed that at least 13 hangars containing aircraft had been destroyed in a wildfire at a base outside Moscow on July 29.
In the United States, we heard similar reports from the government in the days following the 9/11 attack in 2001. Here is an excerpt from Healthandenergy.com:
The destruction of the twin towers shot pulverized asbestos, lead, concrete, glass, and other debris into the air throughout lower Manhattan.
[…]
A week after the attack, the EPA announced that the air near ground zero was safe to breathe, but the agency did not have enough information to make such a guarantee, the inspector general’s report said.
“Christie Whitman was too premature to say it was safe,” Cahill said Tuesday. “I think the EPA should have known. The EPA had its own reports saying it could be dangerous. Why didn’t the EPA bring in their own people from all over the country? They could have. Never thought of it. They did later. But not in the time that mattered.”
The White House “convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones” by having the National Security Council control EPA communications, the inspector general’s report found.
Many firefighters and others who worked at the 9/11 site have suffered from serious respiratory problems, which probably were caused by breathing the air at the disaster site.
