Kiev, Ukraine - New fires broke out in the area
around the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant on Thursday, fanned
by heavy winds that have made it harder to put out the blaze,
Ukrainian officials said.
Emergency workers managed several days ago to contain an
initial bout of fires that tore through forests around the site
of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986. Ukrainian
authorities have played down any radiation risk.
The state emergency service said three new fires had broken
out but were "not large-scale and not threatening".
"The radioactive background in Kiev and the Kiev region is
within normal limits," Volodymyr Demchuk, director of the
Emergency Response Department, said in a video statement.
He said more than 1000 people were involved in trying to
extinguish the fires.
Emergency workers used planes and helicopters to put out the
earlier blaze this week but heavy winds prevented them from
doing so on Thursday, Deputy Interior Minister Anton
Gerashchenko was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.
The April 26, 1986 Chernobyl disaster in then-Soviet Ukraine
was triggered by a botched safety test in a reactor and sent
clouds of nuclear material across much of Europe.
The plant and the abandoned nearby town of Pripyat have
become a tourist draw, especially since a critically acclaimed
U.S. television miniseries about the accident aired last year.
The Chernobyl site is currently shut as part of a nationwide
lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic.