Deadly Russian Fires Scorch Thousands Of Acres
Fire burns in a peat swamp near the town of Lubertsi, southeast of Moscow. Sergey Ponomarev/AP hide caption
The city of Voronezh is surrounded by flames; a small suburb of Nizhny Novgorod is gone, where President Vladimir Putin met victims. Wildfires charred 200,000 acres in parts of Russia, feeling the worst drought and highest temperatures in years. At least 20 people are dead. NPR's David Greene reports:
Crops have been destroyed by the drought. People have drowned, trying to keep cool in rivers and lakes. Now, forest fires have grown out of control....Here in Moscow, temperatures have hovered around 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the past week, and thick clouds of smoke from nearby peat fires have made air difficult to breathe.
Hundreds of homes have burned and the wheat crop is almost lost.