Russia (bbabo.net), - Replacing Mi-8 helicopters with unmanned aerial vehicles when monitoring fire conditions in forests, as well as mineralized fault lines near settlements, will significantly increase the efficiency of fighting forest fires. The Plenipotentiary Representative of the President in the Far Eastern Federal District, Deputy Prime Minister Yury Trutnev, spoke about this following a meeting of the district council.
In general, federal funding for fire prevention measures has been doubled this year, Trutnev recalled, and for individual regions, for example, Yakutia, five times.
"Some regions simply replaced the funds that they allocated with federal money," he said. "In this case, more money for extinguishing is not obtained." The Deputy Prime Minister assured that such liberties would be the subject of an investigation by law enforcement agencies if they become known already when extinguishing fires.
It is necessary to more actively use simpler and cheaper means of preventing and fighting fires, the Deputy Prime Minister urged. He drew attention to the fact that municipalities have not yet been given the authority to arrange mineralized rupture belts between settlements and forests in order to prevent the fire from spreading from trees to residents' houses. Such an instruction was given last summer during a trip to burning regions, it has not yet been fulfilled, he added. This simple measure could protect many people from fire, Trutnev said.
“Money has been added to patrol the fire situation in the forests,” Trutnev said. “But everyone knows how much a Mi-8 flight hour costs, it’s an expensive car.” Instead of helicopters, a representative of the president suggested using drones. However, it turned out that there are only six such devices in the entire vast district. Regional authorities were asked to consider a scheme for purchasing drones and replacing helicopters with them.
"The issues seem to be small, but they can significantly increase the efficiency of our work," summed up Yury Trutnev.
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