Numerical strength of Russia’s group for forest fire prevention

Numerical strength of the forces for forest fire prevention and fight in Russia will make up almost one million people, Director of the Russian Emergencies Ministry’s Civil Protection Department Sergei Didenko said on Tuesday, explaining that the group embraces staffers of the ministry and other services. “In order to prevent and fight possible emergencies in the fire-prone period, as well as to support fire safety, the state unified emergencies control system established a group, which will embrace more than 935,000 people and 144,000 units of special hardware, including 133,116 Emergencies Ministry’s specialists and 18,597 units of the ministry’s machinery,” Didenko said. In addition, the group will involve in its operations 181 fire-fighting planes and helicopters, as well as 58 unmanned aerial vehicles will monitor the situation. “Moreover, four receiving stations of the Russian Emergencies Ministry’s space monitoring, six receiving stations of the Russian Hydro-Meteorological Service and one receiving station of the Russian Federal Forestry Service will collect immediate information from space on wildfire developments in the fire-prone period,” the director of the ministry’s Civil Protection Department said. A group of eight spacecraft collect preliminary information to transfer it to the receivers of the emergencies space monitoring units from four to six times a day, he explained, adding that more than 2,500 space photos is planned to be taken in the wildfire period. In order to diminish the risk of fires in the aforesaid period, the Emergencies Ministry will inspect populated areas located in forest zones to make public a list of ill-prepared settlements.