Tundra is ablaze in Magadan region in out-of-season wildfire, complicated by wind and zero snow

The grass is burning on 360 hectares close to villages of Pribrezhniy and Arman in the Magadan region, with the fire spreading fast because of strong wind.

The wildfire started in a temperature of minus 20C, and is proving hard to extinguish because firemen cannot get water from frozen lakes and rivers.

Normally the ground would be under thick snow by this time of year; this November several areas of eastern Russia, like its coldest territory Yakutia, say they are short of snow. 

‘Our villages are covered with smoke, there is a strong smell of burning,’  said Marina Kirichenko, a local official in Magadan region.

Her village Pribrezhniy and neighbouring Arman are under threat, and she claimed the blaze burning the tundra was manmade. 

‘I want to cry from pain, as just one careless person destroyed dozens, possibly hundreds hectares of land, multiple animals. By a miracle there was no loss of a human life’, she said. 

Twelve firefighters from Russia’s Aerial Forest Protection Service are working at the site.

Russia has suffered its most intense and the longest year for wildfires on record, with its coldest territory, Yakutia, burning from the end of April till the beginning of October.