In south-central Russia, fires have been spreading across the steppes and taiga of the region during May, many of which are forest fires burning out of control, according to regional news reports. Several people lost their lives in fires that swept through villages in the Ural Mountains in western Russia. This image was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua satellite on May 19, 2004, and it shows the actively burning fires marked in yellow with red perimeters. The upper right quadrant of the scene, covering the area around the city of Krasnoyarsk is shrouded with smoke. In the upper left quadrant, a line of fires is burning along the banks of the Ket’ River, which flows into the broad Ob’ River.
Image by Jesse Allen, based on data from the MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA-GSFC
