Muscovites Flee Worst Heat `in 1,000 Years'; Death Rate Doubles

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Aug 9, 2010

Muscovites fled the Russian capital in record numbers as extreme heat combined with acrid smoke from wildfires, slowing trading on the city’s main stock exchange and emptying restaurants.

More than 104,400 people flew out of Moscow yesterday, topping the previous 2010 record of 101,000, according to the Federal Air Transportation Agency. On Aug. 7, 95,000 left the city by plane, 20 percent more than the year-earlier date, agency spokesman Sergei Izvolsky said by telephone today.

Moscow set a daily heat record of 35.5 degrees Celsius (95.5 degrees Fahrenheit) today, the seventh such record this month and the 19th of the summer, said Tatyana Pozdnyakova, a spokeswoman for the city’s weather service. The city reached 38.2 degrees Celsius, the highest ever, on July 29.

The heat wave, smoke from forest fires across central Russia and the Volga River region, and the country’s worst drought in half a century have combined to hobble agriculture and slow the services industry and manufacturing. Financial companies are now affected….”

See:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-09/muscovites-flee-russian-capital-as-smog-from-wildfires-doubles-death-rate.html


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