Fire and flood apocalypse with wildfires raging and dire threat to Baikal, world’s deepest lake

A series of natural disasters are hitting Siberia, with the latest a dire threat from severe flooding to Baikal - the oldest and deepest lake in the worth, containing 20% of the planet’s unfrozen freshwater. 

The alert concerns flooding in Baikalsk - where evacuation has begun - and concerns that toxic mudflows can dump poisonous sludge from a former pulp and paper mill into the lake’s pristine maters. 

Pools of liquid sludge containing lignin poses a huge threat to the life in Baikal with warnings of an ‘ecological catastrophe’.

‘We can only pray now,” said one campaigner pointing to a risk of a dam burst on the Solzana River where a bride had been swept away already. 

While Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill, a Soviet-era production facility seen as an ecological threat to the lake,  is now closed, the risk of pollution from untreated waste storages at the site is acute, say reports. 

The last devastating Baikal mudflow was in July 1971 which washed 20 kilometres of the Trans-Siberian Railway into the lake and destroyed several sections of the road from Irkutsk to Ulan-Ude.

The railway could again be threatened.

Elsewhere, some 2,000 have been evacuated in major flooding in Amur region in the Russian Far East. 

There are fears of a repeat of the massive destruction of 2013. 

Stranded pets have been rescued with 17 villages hit and 600 houses underwater. 

Some 3,000 kilometres east, the settlement of Tulun has faced its second massive evacuation in a month from flooding - while also suffering from wildfire smoke. 

The Iya River is expected to use up to 10 metres above its normal level.

President Vladimir Putin has twice visited this area in Irkutsk region after the first wave of flooding.

With wildfires, almost 3 million hectares are now burning in Siberia and the Russian Far East.

Smoke pollution has eased in Kemerovo, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, and Altai regions - but is forecast to return with a change of wind direction.

Out-of-control infernos are destroying permafrost by burning the tundra both north and south of the Arctic Circle.

Elsewhere centuries-old boreal forests of cedar, pine and larch - known as the  lungs of the Northern Hemisphere - are turning to ashes. 

Concern in rising over health risks with locals complaining they are living in a “gas chamber”, while wild animals are “fried alive”.

Worst hit is Yakutia where 1.8 million hectares are now ablaze. 

Here the tundra is aflame on both sides on both sides of the Arctic Circle. 

In Krasnoyarsk, just short of one million hectares are on fire. 

Here, an Emergencies Ministry pilot said that he has been waiting to fly his water-spraying plane on burning forests but no order was given. 

'Every day I and the whole team are on duty. There are four aircraft,' he revealed. 

'Since the beginning of the fires, not a single specialised Be-200 has been lifted into the air. 

'Yet all around everything is burning and in the smoke.'

Like many locals he attacked the authorities for turning a blind eye to fires in remote locations where few live. 

‘They say it is expensive to extinguish and if part of the forest burns down - it is not scary.,’ he said. 'I think this is absurd. 

‘The forest burns and does not stop - the fire spreads in dry and windy weather. 

‘Of course, now, probably it will be expensive to extinguish everything that burns. 

‘But why was there no order to fly out earlier, when the fire had just begun to spread. Everything was under control then?

'I have been living in the North for a long time - there have been fires before, but I have not seen one like this year. 

‘Yes, the fire is far from people, for example, in Vanavara, but there is such smoke there! And no-one thinks about the people who are there.’

Postings from people hit by fires have been dramatic. 

‘Our children are suffocating,’ one woman posted.

‘We are right next to the epicentres of wildfires, and we struggle to breathe,’ complained mother Marina in Evenkia, in the north of Krasnoyarsk region, one of the worst-hit. 

Olga from Tura, in the same region, said: ‘We see bears coming out of the taiga one after the other, deer, too, and smaller animals - but mainly bears. 

‘Planes stopped coming because they can’t land in thick smog. 

‘People walk around the village in masks but they are no real help as even with a mask on it hurts to breathe.' 

More than 1,500 km further west, Valeria Glukhova from the city of Omsk, said: ‘I was at a bus stop and I felt like I was locked inside a gas chamber. 

‘Every time I inhaled the air burnt my lungs. I returned home with awful headache and soon started vomiting.

‘My husband called an ambulance. 

‘My head is aching, my throat is hurting, my eyes are itchy. 

‘I had to walk for about ten minutes, and now hair smells of smoke so badly, as if I was sitting all night long by a campfire. 

‘I saw many teenagers and children wearing medical masks, but I am pretty sure they are not enough, you literally need a gas mask.’

In badly-hit Vanavara locals have posted pictures which have been disputed by local administration chief Alexander Zarubin who accused them in exaggeration, using photoshop or filters, which they deny. 

In this settlement a child was shown wearing a mask because of the pollution.

Locals accuse Zarubin of talking ‘nonsense’.

A senior regional official denied that the situation was as serious as resdients and the media had claimed. 'This is a common natural phenomenon, it is meaningless to fight with this, and sometimes it can be even harmful. If we have a snowstorm in winter in cold weather, no one comes up with the idea to drown icebergs so that we have a warmer weather.’ said Krasnoyarsk governor Alexander Uss.

UPDATE: 

Today Russia declared a state of emergency over wildfires in Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk regions and parts of Sakha (Yakutia) and Buryatia republics.