In 2007, more than 200,700 fires claimed around 14,000 lives in Russia, but it is 5% less than last year.
On the contrary, natural disasters statistics is not improving – there are over 400 of them this year.
“Unfortunately, we witnessed a growing trend in weather emergencies such as earthquakes and wind storms,” said Sergey Shoigu, Russian Emergencies Minister.
One of the worst of Russia’s 400 catastrophes in 2007 was the oil spill in the Kerch Strait where a storm tore apart a tanker and at least 2,000 metric tons of fuel was dumped into the sea.
The World Wildlife Fund and other organisations tried their best to alleviate the environmental impact of the catastrophe but they need more help from the government.
“The oil spill on the border between the Black Sea and the Azov Sea showed that our ports are not really prepared to handle such kind of disasters,”
