Planes diverted, offices close as Moscow chokes

Planes were diverted from Moscow airports on Friday after huge peat and forest fires blanketed the capital in acrid smoke, forcing some businesses to close and office workers to wear surgical masks at their desks.                                            
 

Pollution surged to five times normal levels in the city of 10.5 million, the highest sustained contamination since Russia's worst heat wave in more than a century began a month ago. Officials urged Muscovites to not venture outdoors.                                            
 

"Looking at the overall duration (of the pollution), today's smoke level is the worst yet," said Alexei Popikov, an expert on air quality at Moscow's state-run pollution monitoring agency.                                            
The famous onion domes of St Basil's cathedral were not visible from the other end of Red Square on Friday morning because of the dense smoke. NASA satellite images showed a 3,000 km-long (1,850 mile) smoke cloud covering European Russia.       
 

The deadliest wildfires in nearly four decades have killed at least 50 people and left thousands homeless as entire villages of wooden houses burned down. Russia has also announced a temporary ban on grain exports after crops were ravaged.     

Despite a huge effort involving 150,000 people fighting fires, authorities appeared to be losing the battle.                                           
The size of peat fires burning in the Moscow region almost doubled from 37.5 hectares on Thursday to 65.7 hectares on Friday, the regional branch of the emergencies ministry said on its website.                                           
 

The emergency has prompted the country's enfeebled opposition to complain of poor fire safety readiness and a slow, inefficient government response.