April 14, 2020
On April 12, 2020, NOAA-20 passed over Ukraine as severe blazes around the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and the capital city of Kyiv, were finally winding down after their initial ignition on April 5. Police have arrested the party responsible for the flare-up, a resident of Rahivka village--which is 30 miles from Chernobyl--after he reportedly set fire to trash and leaves.
Wildfires in this heavily forested area are not unusual. However, Ukraine’s unusually dry and warm winter has led to larger-than-normal fires, a recipe for disaster in the middle of a pandemic and within one of the most radioactive places on Earth. “These large fires,” explained Dr. William Straka,a researcher at Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS), “can loft radioactive particles into the atmosphere, as the fires are in the contaminated forests, depositing it downwind...towards Kyiv [which is under] lockdown due to the pandemic.” The exact region where the smoke goes is dependent on the wind at various levels, meaning the area and population affected could potentially be quite large depending on the amount of smoke produced.
There was some concern that the fires would eventually reach the remnants of the nuclear plant and the buried equipment used to clean up the 1986 disaster. Our satellite image shows heat signatures within 10 miles of the now-abandoned town of Pripyat, which is adjacent to the Chernobyl site. Moreover, the State Agency of Ukraine On Exclusion Zone Management (SAUEZM) posted a map on their Facebook account that shows the fires within three miles of the Exclusion Zone.
Thanks to preparations by the SAUEZM late last year and earlier this year, the authorities were able to coordinate and extinguish most of the outbreaks. In all, more than 500 people were involved in containing the emergency situation. The government also asserted that despite the elevated radiation levels caused by the fires, the background radiation in the Kyiv region is within normal limits and does not exceed natural background values; which are five times less than the permissible radiation limit.
This image was captured by the NOAA-20 satellite's VIIRS instrument , which scans the entire Earth twice per day at a 750-meter resolution. Multiple visible and infrared channels allow it to detect atmospheric aerosols, such as dust, smoke and haze associated with industrial pollution and fires. The polar-orbiting satellite circles the globe 14 times daily and captures a complete daytime view of our planet once every 24 hours.