Worst Forest Fire For 38 Years

Northern Advocate, 27 October 1938, Page 4

Worst Forest Fire For 38 Years

LONDON, September 16, A 200-mile-long fire, sweeping peatland and forest along the Russian frontier from the Gulf of Finland to the- border of Latvia, is the origin of the mysterious smoke pall which, for a week, has been drifting 350 miles across the Baltic, hampering shipping. The Soviet had officially denied that the smoke blanket was due to forest fires in their territory. A Helsingfors message spoke of “new outbreaks” at Rybinsk, 130 miles north-east of Moscow, and at Luga, 75 miles from Leningrad. Another version was that the Russians had been deliberately firing land on the frontier to make a no man’s land for defence purposes. But last night a Talinn official revealed that squads of Russian labourers had been exploding dynamite in the path of the flames in a desperate effort to check them. “Now Under Control.” “The thunder of the successive explosions can be heard across the frontier by Estonians living near the border,” he said. “Many of these people are suffering from mild attacks of asphyxia after enduring days of the heavy black smoke that has swept into them homes. “Tonight we have word that the fire is now under control. We are 150 miles from the frontier here, but even in Talinn we have had smoke clouds. “Ships at sea have had to use fog signals, so dense was the pall at one time. “In the city itself, however, it has not been very thick, and visibility has not really been affected. It is at the Estonian frontier that people have suffered most. “There is no truth in the suggestion that the Russians have been deliberately firing it for defence purposes. They have been doing all they can to get it under control. “There has not been a fire like it for 30 years.”