Rains have helped forest protection services to liquidate on Thursday four forest fires and localize several more conflagrations in the Khabarovsk territory. However, “16 fires at an area of 2,505 hectares remain by Friday morning,” the forestry ministry of the territory told Itar-Tass on Friday. Head of the regional forest management department Alexander Sozyumov told Itar-Tass that “forest protection services have insufficient financing. The fire fighting costs have already exceeded 60 million Roubles, but the federal centre has provided just 34.5 million Roubles.” “Last year, the related spending reached 1.151 billion Roubles and this year has been cut twice,” the official stressed. Debts for the last year's works have not been settled yet, and the sums of non-payments are growing. Air companies with which agreements have been concluded on fire fighting efforts' support “have warned that they are reducing the number of flights and may even stop them altogether if the debts are not settled,” said Sozyumov. Almost 129,000 hectares of forestland have burnt in the Khabarovsk territory since the beginning of the fire hazard season.
