MOSCOW, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- Wildfires continued to rage across Russia Tuesday with authorities unable to stop them despite a massive firefighting operation.
The fires have destroyed residential houses, consumed farmland, left 2,000 people homeless and killed at least 40 people in several regions around Moscow, causing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to declare a state of emergency.
The Kremlin has dispatched some 200,000 emergency workers and dozens of planes to fight the fires but it's proving an uphill battle due to strong winds and the hottest summer since temperature recordings began 130 years ago.
Russian authorities reported 529 fires raging Tuesday, covering an area of 425,000 acres, compared with 460 fires Monday.
The regions of Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh and Ryazan have been worst hit. The government has sent extra firefighters to protect a major nuclear facility at Sarov, in Nizhny Novgorod, a top secret site during the Cold War, the BBC reports. At Sarov, founded after World War II, the Russian nuclear weapons program was developed.
A spokesman for Russia's nuclear energy agency Rosatom told Russian news agency RIA Novosti that Rosatom head Sergei Kiriyenko has left for Sarov to coordinate the firefighting activities near the nuclear facility.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin over the weekend stopped his summer vacation to fly into the crisis region, promising locals that their burned-down villages would be rebuilt before the winter.
Yet the Kremlin won't be able to replace the crops that have been consumed by the fire: Around one-fifth of Russia's expected grain harvest has been destroyed, causing wheat prices on international markets to climb to a 22-month highs.
In Moscow, people were encouraged to wear gauze masks because of the smoke that has clouded the capital for days.
Officials don't expect a quick end to the fires. The heat wave, ongoing since early July, is expected to bring strong winds and temperatures of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit to Russia this week.
"The situation is still very difficult; the heat is not abating; the forecasts are not looking good, so the threat of new fires is not decreasing," Medvedev wrote in his blog, RIA Novosti reports.
In a bid to improve the reaction to future fires, the president Tuesday ordered Emergency Minister Sergei Shoigu to draw up a special program to boost the firefighting service, including increasing the number of vehicles and airplanes to move firefighters around.
"Separate funding will need to be set aside for that," he was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti.
