Zelenskyy: fires in Chornobyl have been extinguished

As of Wednesday, May 13, all forest fires in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone have been extinguished.

This was stated by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky in his video address.

According to the head of state, now the staff of the State Emergency Service (SES) continues to eliminate forest fires in the Zhytomyr region, most of which have already been overcome.

I want to thank our firefighters and rescuers. In recent days, the topic of fire has lost its hype for some media and gradually disappeared from the information space. However, our firefighters and rescuers continued their daily work… Thank you for your hard work,

Zelensky

Several dozen hectares of forest were burned due to large-scale fires in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. Firefighters, hundreds of units of equipment, and more than half a thousand rescuers had to be involved in extinguishing the fires.

The SES assured that there was no threat to the Shelter facility, radiation waste storage facility, and other critical facilities of the Exclusion Zone. Meanwhile, in the Zhytomyr region, a fire destroyed several dozen houses.

The main reasons for the fires were intentional arson and careless handling of fire. Warm winter and dry forest litter contributed to the spread of fires.

On April 14, a cloud of smoke from the Chornobyl zone covered the capital of Ukraine. Kyivans complained that they smelled a pungent odor, even in apartments with closed windows.