The wildfire area in Russia's Siberian regions has reached 290.2 hectares in the past twenty-four hours, the spokeswoman for the Siberian regional emergencies centre told Itar-Tass on Wednesday. According to Olesya Yenina, nineteen wild fires were registered in Siberia by Wednesday morning, of which nine on an area of 124 hectares were contained. "There are no threats to populated localities," she said. "Forest and steppe fires were registered in the Tomsk and Irkutsk regions, in the Krasnoyarsk and Trans-Baikal territories, and in the republics of Altai, Khakassia, and Tuva." Most of the fires were caused by local residents who burn dry grass. Moreover, the warm and dry weather that has set in in Siberia also facilitates the spread of fires. As many as 1,137 men and 351 units of hardware are involved in fire fighting and fire prevention operations in the area. A total of 285 inspections were staged within the day to monitor the fire situation, and 771 posts were installed to limit entry to forests. A total of 12 thermally active locations were registered as of Wednesday morning.
