Death Toll From Russian Fires Rises - WSJ.com

Russian Fires Rage; Death Toll Rises

By WILLIAM MAULDIN

MOSCOW—Russian wildfires raged across an area the size of Greater London, the outlook for the grain harvest dimmed amid drought and smoke from smoldering underground peat blanketed Moscow Monday as the city endured its worst heatwave in history.

President Dmitry Medvedev called on the military to help and declared a state of emergency in seven Russian regions, including the Moscow region, because of the forest fires.

State television broadcast a phone call with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was shown clad in jeans with shirtsleeves rolled up at the scene of a fire in the hard-hit Nizhny Novgorod region, near the Volga River.

The Volga region has seen the most widespread destruction of grain fields, and the Russian Grain Union on Monday lowered its forecast for the 2010 harvest to between 72 million and 78 million metric tons, helping boost Chicago wheat futures to the highest level in 22 months. The crop was previously seen at 81 million to 85 million tons.

The Emergency Situations Ministry estimated the area covered by forest fires at 128,000 hectares, or 316,294 acres, and at least 34 people have died in all of Russia, according to media reports. A ministry spokeswoman said Russian authorities only use water, often dispersed from planes and helicopters, to fight fires, rather than using chemicals as well as in other countries.

Video screens were placed in Moscow metro stations warning about the dangers of kindling fires during the current drought.

Meanwhile, a southeast wind wafted smoke from forest fires and smoldering underground peat into Moscow on Monday morning, reducing visibility to less than one mile at Vnukovo International Airport. The inflammable dried peat was once a part of swamps near Moscow that were drained in Soviet times, leaving a heightened risk of fire.

Moscow hit an all-time record summer temperature of 38.2 degrees Celsius (101 degrees Fahrenheit) Thursday. In the next few days, high temperatures will be between 35 degrees Celsius and 40 degrees Celsius, the latter temperature being a key "psychological barrier" that Moscow has never crossed, said Dmitry Kiktev, deputy director for science at official forecaster GidroMetTsentr. Last week the town of Bykovo outside of Moscow reached a temperature of 39.2 degrees Celsius, he said.

Outside the capital, crops covering an area larger than Portugal have been killed by the heat and drought, and the Russian Grain Union, which works alongside the Agriculture Ministry, has trimmed harvest forecasts every few days. If the grain yield falls to 72 million tons in 2010, the lower end of the union's forecast, then Russian grain exports may tumble to 11 million tons in the current harvest year, the head of the grain union, Arkady Zlochevsky, said Monday.

Crop damage may lead to higher food prices in Russia, boosting Russian inflation. That in turn could lead the central bank to raise interest rates, some economists said, hurting bond prices but perhaps giving a boost to the ruble. Russia's industrial output in July and August may also be affected by the heat, VTB Capital said Monday.

—Olga Padorina contributed to this article.