Forest fire at exclusion zone around Chernobyl nuclear power plant

A man holds a dosimeter close to an abandoned house burning in the middle of a forest fire near the village of Volodymyrivka, in the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukraine.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said firefighters and rescue teams continued to put out fires at two sites near Rahivka, adding that radiation levels in the capital, Kyiv (Kiev), and Kyiv region is within a normal range.

The total area affected by the fire near Rahivka was reported to be five hectares. The Kyiv police said they have identified on 06 April 2020 a man who allegedly started a mass fire in the uninhabited exclusion zone around the decommissioned Chornobyl nuclear plant last week. The 27-year-old resident of the Rahivka village told investigators that he had set some garbage and grass on fire for fun.

The territory is a long-vacated area near where an explosion at the Chernobyl Soviet nuclear plant in April 1986 sent a plume of radioactive fallout high into the air and across swaths of Europe.

Via EPA-EFE/YAROSLAV YEMELIANENKO