Fires and Storms Kill at Least 28 in Russia

MOSCOW — Stoked by parched forests, dried-out swamps and the hottest summertime temperatures ever recorded in Russia, wildfires burned down several villages in the central part of the country, killing about two dozen people, government officials said Friday.
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Dmitry Chistoprudov/Associated Press

In the hardest hit area, near the city of Nizhny Novgorod east of Moscow, Russian television showed residents ineffectually beating at the flames with hoes and switches of tree branches as houses burned in the background.

“It took only a second and the whole village was on fire,” one man, sweaty and smeared with soot, told the television station Vesti. Farther north, in St. Petersburg, a fierce thunderstorm after days of hot weather led to the deaths of seven people, including a 14-year-old girl, who were crushed by trees and a tractor-trailer rig toppled by high winds, officials said.

Russia, like much of the Northern Hemisphere, has been baking in a heat wave this summer. Thursday was the hottest day in Moscow since record keeping began there under the czars, 130 years go, topping out at 100 degrees.

On Friday, Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, flew to the Vyksa district outside Nizhny Novgorod to console people whose homes had burned overnight. More than 2,000 people were left homeless by the fires, emergency officials said, and few Russians carry insurance.

Mr. Putin promised government aid to rebuild.

Authorities declared a state of emergency that will prohibit people from walking in the forests in several districts of the Moscow region.

Thousands of acres of wheat and barley crops have dried up, and 27 agricultural regions have declared states of emergency because of crop failures. President Dmitri A. Medvedev said that the military might be deployed to fight fires, and that the government would consider buying more firefighting airplanes.

Rescue workers found 21 bodies in central Russia, including nine in villages in Vyksa, the Interfax news agency reported. Mr. Medvedev said rescue work was continuing and the total number of victims was uncertain.

The Ministry of Emergency Situations reported on its Web site that 779 wildfires were burning in Russia, including 42 peat bog fires, which are insidiously hard to fight as the flames burrow into the ground.

More than 10,000 firefighters and 2,158 pieces of firefighting equipment, including 43 airplanes, have been deployed to fight the fires.


A version of this article appeared in print on July 31, 2010, on page A9 of the New York edition.