As a result of the fires in the Charnobyl zone, 30% of tourist locations were burned, said director of the national provider of excursions to the Charnobyl zone Yaroslav Emelianenko on the air of Hromadske.
According to the tour operator, a number of locations – such as old Soviet recreation centers – have been completely lost and cannot be restored.
“A great number of authentic villages in Polesie which showed the life of people who lived there [before the Charnobyl accident] have been lost. This fire has delivered a blow to our heritage and history,” Yaroslav Emelianenko has declared.
The main facilities – the regime town of Charnobyl, the town of Charnobyl-2, the military town with the radar and the town of Pripyat – were not affected, Emelyanenko added. Now “Charnobyl Tour” plans to restore some of the lost buildings.
“We must show the people who come here what happened here,” he added.
The fire in the Charnobyl zone began last week and the wind, despite the rescue work, quickly helped it spread through much of the Charnobyl zone.
On April 13, the fire was two kilometres from the nuclear waste burial site.
After that, the State Emergency Service (SES) sent more equipment and people to eliminate the fire. In total, on Monday the fire aviation made 227 flights, 538 tons of water were poured into the forest.
In the evening of April 14, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Anton Herashchenko said that there no longer was open fire, and firefighters were already eliminating only smouldering areas.
“A lot of work was done by our rescuers, who, first of all, protected important infrastructure from fire, preventing the fire from moving towards the city of Pripyat, the Charnobyl nuclear power plant and nuclear waste storage. Unfortunately, and this is inevitable in forest fires, nature suffered — plants and animals were killed. If it weren’t for the clear and professional actions of the rescuers and especially the firefighters, the losses would have been ten times greater”, the SES press office quoted an official as saying.
The rain on also helped firefighters cope with the fire, Herashchenko said.
Radiation background in the exclusion zone did not increased.
