Moreover three thousand square kilometers of plant cover burned from June to September of last year in ATO zone. The threat of fire has increased more with coming summer. Scientists report about the enormous damage caused to the environment, but officials blamed «militias» and explained why this year this situation won’t be repeated.

“We don’t have already any data about current year. Also we need to write a letter to NASA and to process the information for a few months. However, nearly 3000 fires already destroyed 2970 of square kilometers of plant cover in ATO zone from June to September of 2014” — tells the expert of organization “Ecology-Right-Human” Aleksei Vasyliuk.

According to the words of ecologists, the biggest part of fires in ATO zone fell on a few loess arrays, in particular the districts of Schastie and Slavyansk. Generally, fires destroyed the 17% of all plant cover of zone of Antiterrorist operation.

“The biggest part of the forests near settlements were created in the past to form more moist, cool climate, than the natural climate of the prairie zone. The loosing of forests will become the reason of spoiling the conditions of life in this region. Survival of young forests is very low. More than half of trees die in the first year. Creation of new forests in modern conditions is practically impossible nowadays” — explains Aleksey Vasyliuk.

Significant damage, according to words of scientists, has been suffered to Protected Areas of Luhansk region.

“Wildlife sanctuaries “Naholchansky”, “Volnukhinsky”, “Belohorovsky”, ”Luhansky”, “Perevalsky” and “Peschany” suffered from fires in Luhansk region. The Kalinovsky area of Luhansk reserve “Provalska step” absolutely burned and it’s the 327 hectares, nearly a half of them is the forest. Approximate sum of losses, wrought only to a called reserve territories, is 13 890 700 000 UAH. And we still can’t appreciate the number of destroyed prairie plants and animals, put on The Red Book Of Ukraine” — adds Aleksei Vasyliuk.

According to ecologist words, there is a few reasons of such a burning.

“First of all it happens because nobody extinguishes fires. People burn grass and if earlier it was stewed, now it is burning while it will burn the whole. The second reason is the technical arsons. Militaries fired forest belts and fields for impossibility to shelter there for the enemy or maybe they have another war reasons. Such inflamings happened because of different incendiary shells. But biggest part of the ground burns down because of usual involuntary arsons., which simply nobody extinguishes. From the first days all technic of MES and militia was withdrawn on needs of “republic”. It was used as a simple auto transport. That’s why there weren’t anything to extinguish fires. And in a peacetime firefighters very often didn’t blow out fire under the pretext of absence of financing. They waited when fire will be spread, when you can call this the emergency situation and to get money for mass-distinguishing of fire from the separate fund. Now foresters of every region, in the central office have some special equipment to struggle with fire, but it’s not enough” — explains scientist.

The head of Regional State Administration of Stanitsa Luhanska Jury Zolkin considers that disaster of the last year won’t be repeated.

“There is a fire hazard now, except this the fightings are taking part, the red-hot splinters from mines are flying away, of course the fires is appearing. But, the situation is much better comparing with last year — he considers — The forestry was robbed by “militants” in the last year. All cars were took away. That’s why the forestry can’t prevent burnings. This year forestry economy works in a more or less normal regime: actions are taken, distinguished and localized. Of course if there is a fighting nobody goes on a fire. But shootings begin to take short and local character and there is a possibility to struggle with fires. That’s why they didn’t get so threatening character as it was last year.

According to opinion of Aleksei Vasyliuk not only fire is dangerous also the smoke too.

“Smoke is the carcinogen and it’s harmful by itself. When people began to burn leaves in autumn, the allergy begins in a big number of persons. Somebody says the autumn is the time of dismisses. It’s really not true! Simply a lot of people have the allergy on the smoke, however people didn’t perceive smoke as a some problem — considers ecologist — There is one more danger of fires in ATO zone. The fire from dry grass spreads on the wooden pillars of Electrical Transmission, they are very common there, electric supply is breaking and the necessity of recovery of lines of Electric Transmissions appears. But, it’s understood that nobody do anything now about this”.

Dennis Matsola for informator.lg.ua