The Wall Street Journal reports:

The smoke from the fires in Russia’s northeast is so thick it has blotted out the sun, plunging swaths of the region into darkness during the brief summer.

A state of emergency has been declared in the city of Yakutsk, where freezing winter temperatures have given it the reputation of being the coldest constantly inhabited city on the planet. Residents have been told to stay indoors while volunteers and firefighters brave temperatures surpassing 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

In all, the wildfires have devoured over 10 million acres of land in the Yakutia region this summer, with 175 fires still burning, according to government data. Scientists fear the amount of carbon dioxide released from the Russian blazes could surpass last year’s record. Similar scenes are playing out across several parts of the globe as emergency teams battle wildfires in Turkey, Southern Europe and the U.S., including California and Hawaii, where brush fires have exploded to encompass some 40,000 acres. Scientists say extreme heat in some areas and drought have contributed to sparking the fires.

More than 2,400 firefighters have been deployed to battle the Russian wildfires, supported by troops and military aircraft, while volunteers such as Ayil Dyulurkha have pitched in, desperate to stop the wildfires spreading to towns where they could destroy homes and businesses.

It is a world away from managing the courier company he founded six months ago in Yakutsk, Mr. Dyulurkha said. “When you come back from the fire, you cough and black soot shoots from your nose,” he said.

The 48-year-old businessman said he was spurred to action after seeing videos of the blaze shot by residents failing to slow the advances of the flames.

“The despair of these people awakened something inside me,” Mr. Dyulurkha recalled. “People were left alone with their misfortune. There wasn’t enough support.”

He rallied other volunteers through Facebook and Instagram and soon he had gathered around a dozen people. The number of the ragtag team sometimes falls to five and at others rises to more than two dozen, Mr. Dyulurkha said.

Equipped with respirators and wearing overalls, their 10- to 12-hour shifts include shoveling dirt from the trenches made by tractors to secure the fire break, removing fallen trees that block escape routes, and using backpack water tanks to extinguish spot fires. At night, they keep watch to ensure the fires don’t jump the safety line, Mr. Dyulurkha said.

Sometimes the heat is so overwhelming that some of the volunteers’ rubber boots melt as they work. One fire burned down their forest camp, consuming everything from their equipment to fuel and food, he said.

Fires have burned around 6.8 million acres of land across all of Russia since the beginning of fire season in May, according to government data, making it the fourth year in the row the world’s largest country has been ravaged. The local branch of environmental organization Greenpeace estimates the devastation is likely much greater.

“The situation is very bad,” said Alexey Yaroshenko, head of Greenpeace’s forest department. “The problem is not only with very large fires this year, but also the fact that fire disasters of this magnitude are happening every year in the Russian taiga,” or boreal forest. [Continue reading…]