Russia is Burning: Moscow Mayor Vacations as Residents Fall Sick

The Russian capital is literally choking in the smog of forest and peat bog fires that have taken at least 52 lives and left thousands more homeless. Air pollution is five times normal levels, and city officials have told people to stay indoors because of dangerous levels of carbon monoxide. This afternoon the World Wildlife Fund warned that radiation deposits that have lain in the canopy of Russian forests ever since the Chernobyl disaster 20 years ago will reenter the atmosphere if caught in the fires.

And the mayor of Moscow, of course, is on holiday.

“What problems? Have we got an emergency situation in Moscow, a crisis situation, what’s the problem in Moscow?” Yuri Luzhkov told Life News when he was challenged about it. “It is Moscow’s problem? Is the crisis in Moscow?”

Well, mayor Luzhkov, I personally feel like I’ve burnt through several decks of cigarettes, my gut is unsettled and my eyes are burning through the side of my head. Everyone I know is complaining of the same symptoms. The streets are crammed with a dense, gray-white smog, and you can’t walk for more than a couple of minutes without feeling nauseous. Getting on the metro is like descending into Hell – at some stations it’s impossible to see the bottom of escalators from the top. On the major roads traffic jams trail off into a hazy invisibility. And in case it slipped your notice, it was 36 Celsius today, and I can’t remember when the mercury last dropped into the 20s.

But don’t take my word for it, ask Moscow’s morgue workers, who told the Life.ru news site that they’ve seen “as many bodies today as we normally get in a week.”

No comment from the authorities on that one just yet.

“It’s got absurd,” said another health worker. “People close all the windows and doors in their apartments, and air cannot circulate at all. Their health suffers, but the only thing to do is drink more fluid and if possible include a fan.”

The key phrase there is “if possible.” Moscow’s shops ran out of electric fans about a month ago. A friend of mine bought one of the last ones. It cost her 100 dollars. The waiting list for AC installation runs until October.

There’s no escape. Office workers have been issued with gauze face masks and sent home en masse, but at my work the supposedly skeleton staff who stayed on were augmented by those whose apartments are even more over heated, hazy, and nausea-inducing than the office. The smoke may seem to seep through the leaky, Soviet-built concrete walls, but at least there is air conditioning, free face masks and, courtesy of the management, a “breathing room” – where you can put on a gas mask for a few minutes when breathing the unfiltered smog gets too much.

But Moscow is only the frying pan. A couple of hundred kilometers east and south, as far is Mayor Luzhkov is concerned, is the “problem” – the fire itself, thousands of homeless refugees and whole villages burnt to the ground. If here it’s unpleasant, out there the situation is by all accounts simply horrific.

The only option is to flee further afield, and Muscovites are following their mayor’s lead with a vengeance. Long distance trains headed west – anywhere to the west – are completely booked to bursting. The roads to the airports are crammed. Flights are being rescheduled because of poor visibility.

Me? I’m off to the Pacific coast. In Vladivostok, they say, it’s 25 degrees and sunny.

Photo by Tambako the Jaguar