MOSCOW — Russian firefighters used water-carrying planes on Saturday to contain forest fires that tore through the central region of Chelyabinsk, killing one man and destroying dozens of village homes, authorities said.
Hundreds of residents were evacuated on Friday as strong winds complicated efforts to control the blaze, which spread across 14,000 hectares (35,000 acres) in the area some 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) east of the capital, Moscow.
“The fire was spreading at a speed of more than 150 metres (490 feet) per minute – that’s a huge speed. It was a firestorm, a burst that was impossible to put out,” the country’s deputy emergencies minister, Ilya Denisov, was quoted …
Keep on reading: Forest ‘firestorm’ kills one, destroys homes in central Russia