Forest fires raged across Russia on Friday, destroying villages, surrounding one southern city and killing at least 29 people, including three firefighters. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin consoled survivors at one smoldering village and urged officials to redouble their efforts against the blazes. The fires have spread quickly across more than 200,000 acres in recent days after a record heat wave and severe drought. July has been the hottest month in Moscow in 130 years of recorded history. Fields and forests have dried up, and much of this year's wheat harvest has been ruined. Putin on Friday visited the ruins of Verkhnyaya Vereya, where all 341 houses were burned to the ground and five residents died in the blaze. The village was one of three destroyed around Nizhny Novgorod, Russia's fifth-largest city located 300 miles east of Moscow. “Before winter, each house will be restored,” Putin told a crowd of distressed villagers, most of them women. “I promise - the village will be rebuilt.” One weeping woman thanked him for his “serious talk” and promises of compensation of 200,000 rubles ($6,500) for each villager, and Putin kissed her on the cheek. Fires have all but encircled Voronezh, a city of 850,000 people, some 300 miles south of Moscow. The streets of Voronezh were filled with smog Friday and a giant wall of rising black smoke could be seen on the horizon, television footage showed. More than 900 patients had to be hurriedly transferred out of a Voronezh hospital and nearly 2,000 children were evacuated from 12 summer camps in the path of the flames. Firefighters were pouring water on the forests from the air, emergencies services spokeswoman Olga Izvekova said. At least 25 people have died in the past two days from the forest fires, officials say. Fires in the Voronezh, Nizhny Novogorod and Moscow regions alone have destroyed more than 1,000 houses and left more than 2,000 people homeless, according to the country's Emergencies Ministry. Fires also were raging in 11 other regions in central and southern Russia.
