Days after fire tore through forests around defunct nuclear plant of Chernobyl, the Ukrainian officials have now said that it has finally been put out, after hundreds of emergency workers used planes and helicopters to douse the flames.
Environmental activists believed that the fire near the site of world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986 was started deliberately and posed a radiation risk.?
Officials said they registered short-term rises in Caesium-137 particles in the Kiev area to the south of the plant, but radiation levels were within normal limits overall and did not require additional protection measures.??
Assisted by rain, emergency services prevented the fire from spreading to either the plant or military facilities in the area, though they will need a few more days to fully extinguish it, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's office said in a statement.
Separately, the state agency responsible for managing the area around the plant said new fires had broken out to the west and south of the site. Their extent was not immediately clear.
The main fire, one of several that followed unusually dry weather, broke out on April 3.
Police have accused a 27-year old local of deliberately starting it, and Zelenskiy's office said officers had detained suspected arsonists near two points where the fire broke out.
The Chernobyl disaster in then-Soviet Ukraine occurred on April 26, 1986. It was caused by a botched safety test in reactor and sent clouds of nuclear material across much of Europe.