Russian troops dug a 8km long canal to keep fires caused by a record heatwave away from a nuclear arms site, local media said today as air pollution from the crisis rose to more than six times above normal.
Forest and peat fires caused by the hottest weather ever recorded in Moscow have killed at least 52 people, made more than 4,000 homeless, diverted many flights and forced Muscovites to wear surgical masks to filter out foul air.
"The fire situation in the Moscow region is still tense, but there is no danger either for residential areas or for economic sites," an Emergencies Ministry spokesman said.
Weather forecasts said the smoke, which has reached even underground metro stations, would persist until Wednesday.
Echo Moskvy radio station said army troops excavated the canal to prevent the flames from advancing into the Sarov nuclear arms facility, ringed by forest in the Niznhy Novgorod region around 350km east of Moscow.
The Emergencies Ministry said the situation in Sarov had "stabilised". Sarov is a closed town whose nuclear site produced the first Soviet atomic bomb in 1949 and remains the main nuclear design and production facility in Russia.
On Thursday, Russia's nuclear chief assured President Dmitry Medvedev that all explosive and radioactive material had been removed from the nuclear site as a precautionary measure.
Air pollution surged to more than six times the normal reading in Moscow, a city of 10.5 million, the highest sustained contamination since the heatwave began a month ago, Moscow's pollution monitoring agency said.
The heatwave is the worst since records began 130 years ago.
The US state department urged people to carefully consider any plans to travel to Moscow. Italy's Interior Ministry recommended people refrain from travelling to Russia in the next 7-10 days, according to ITAR-TASS.
Many people on the streets of Moscow were wearing masks to ward off the heavy smog, while suffering from sweltering heat as the temperature climbed to 36 Celsius, verging on the record high for the day.
Officials have urged Muscovites to stay indoors because of hazardous levels of carbon monoxide and fine particles in the air.
The capital was unusually quiet today, but those who had not left town went about their daily business. Some even tried to cash in on the smog by selling the masks on the street.
With visibility low, local media said air traffic was being diverted to Sheremetyevo airport, north of Moscow, where smog was not so dense as in other parts of the capital. Some flights have been rerouted as far away as Ukraine from Moscow.
Reuters