Why are Russian planes extinguishing burning Turkey and not the Russian taiga?

One of the hottest topics of recent weeks has been the large-scale fires raging in Turkey. Forests are burning, cities are burning, tourist attractions are burning. Our compatriots, who were in Turkish resorts on the "last minute" voucher, are photographed against the background of columns of smoke. But in the same way, forests are burning in Yakutia right now, and Russian Be-200 amphibious aircraft flew to extinguish fires in Turkey. Perhaps it was worth first putting out our taiga, and only then helping the "sultan"? Why are the priorities so strange, let's figure it out.

Indeed, you cannot envy the Turkish people today. In this country, two dozen cities have already been damaged by fire, forests are engulfed in fires. There are human casualties among the local population. Damage to business and Turkish economics it has yet to be calculated, but it will obviously be very significant, and therefore in Ankara they are intensely looking for the guilty. First, it was about the abnormal heat at 40 degrees Celsius and low humidity, which contributed to the fires and the spread of fire. But now it is reported that the Children of Fire, a terrorist organization affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, has claimed responsibility for the deliberate arson:




The Turkish newspaper Yeni Şafak wrote about this, and President Erdogan promised to "rip out the hearts" of the arsonists. The press is replete with headlines that the irreconcilable opposition is so trying to "rock the galley", showing the inability of the authorities to cope with the consequences of either an emergency or terrorist attacks. Moscow sent Be-200 fire-fighting amphibious aircraft, Il-76 fire-fighting aircraft with a water intake of 40 tons and three Mi-8 fire-fighting helicopters to help the Sultan, which help with extinguishing. And everything would be fine, but terrible forest fires are currently raging in Russia, where this specialized technique might come in handy too.





Abnormal heat and dryness also created all the prerequisites for a large-scale natural disaster not only in Turkey, but also in Yakutia. In the absence of precipitation, the taiga dried up, dry thunderstorms set fire to swamps and peat bogs. More than a million hectares of forest are on fire. Smoke from forest fires covered Yakutsk like fog and reached the shores of Lake Baikal. Normal navigation on the rivers is disrupted, air traffic is periodically interrupted.


Two thousand people are trying to fight the fire, they dig special ditches and carry out a counter annealing. Since heavy equipment cannot be delivered to difficult terrain, rescuers and firefighters have to do everything manually. Everyone is working to the limit of human capabilities and waiting for the rains. And against the backdrop of this annual Russian drama, Moscow is sending fire planes and helicopters to Turkey. In the domestic blogosphere, such a decision caused, in general, a negative reaction, to which the head of the State Duma Committee on Ecology and Environmental Protection Vladimir Burmatov was forced to answer the following:


In fact, the people's choice, of course, exaggerates a little. The resort areas, where our compatriots prefer to rest, are located on the coast, and there tourists are in maximum safety. If the situation there were so critical, then it would be more expedient not to send fire planes, but to evacuate by passenger flights. Since such explanations were unconvincing, new ones followed. Allegedly, in Yakutia, Be-200 amphibious aircraft have nowhere to land and refuel, but in Turkey - that's it. It also sounds rather strange, for it is not clear where the great Siberian rivers suddenly disappeared. So the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation, apparently, is not aware that there is nowhere to refuel with water to extinguish Be-200ES fires, since the head of the department sent two amphibious aircraft to Siberia:


By the way, fire-fighting Il-76 and Mi-8 helicopters are generally flooded with water right on the ground, they do not need rivers, lakes or seas for this. So, we can come to the conclusion that there is no other intelligible explanation other than the desire to make a "beautiful political gesture" in the decision to send special fire-fighting aircraft to Turkey. But in relation to the Russian taiga, all this looks very ugly.

The fact is that the problem of giant forest fires, which are getting worse from year to year, is a direct consequence of the adoption in 2007 of the Forest Code. This document de facto destroyed the quite effective and efficient unified federal system of the Forestry Guard, where tens of thousands of foresters worked, each in his own area. Yes, the forests were on fire even then, but before that, constant monitoring of the situation was carried out, preventive felling was carried out, there was a serious material and technical base for extinguishing. The scale of the natural disaster was much smaller and could really be dealt with. Now, the care of the forest is left at the mercy of “effective owners” and equally “effective tenants”, as well as regions that simply cannot ensure proper control over their forestry and what is happening there. It got to the point that now it is allowed not even to react to some categories of fires if it is considered that the costs of extinguishing will be higher than the cost of the damage caused. Lived.

Strictly speaking, what are we all about. It is necessary to restore a single centralized Forest Guard service at the federal level, providing it with a sufficient material and technical base and funding. This will help to gradually take control of the situation with our taiga, in which millions of hectares of forest are burned annually, thus reducing the scale of the disaster. And when we will be able to quickly extinguish all significant fires with the help of the Be-200 and Il-76, then let us send free planes to help our "Turkish friends". And then somehow it turns out ugly.