"We can argue over beer as much as we want about whether we should put it out, but we'll still go and put it out."
How Yekaterinburg's volunteer firefighters live and why they fight wildfires for free
"I'm wary of any fire in the forest. When I see a campfire, I feel sick; I can't even stand the smell. I've seen enough of this. How even the slightest carelessness can have dire consequences," says Victoria, coordinator of the Rapid Response Volunteers (RVR). Volunteer firefighters from the Sverdlovsk region have been fighting peat and forest fires in an organized manner for years. During this time, they've seen a wide variety of fires, most of which were caused by humans. They view any fire as a potential natural disaster that will take days, sometimes months, to combat.
We meet in a small coffee shop in the center of Yekaterinburg, four people at a table, all volunteers from the DBR. To the left is tall and stately Victoria, the coordinator; across from her is Olga, a smiling woman with a ring in her eyebrow; next to her is Irina, wearing a dark green hiking jacket. A little further away is the quiet and calm Pavel, the only man at our meeting. The remaining empty chair is occupied by a bright orange construction helmet covered in stickers. This chair could have been occupied by another of our heroes, Igor, one of the most experienced DBR volunteers, but he wasn't able to make it to the meeting; we spoke with him separately, and his story is no less interesting than the others.
The volunteer organization includes people of all ages, men and women, experienced and novice. As soon as forests and dry swamps in the Sverdlovsk region begin to burn, they rush to the scene and fight the blazes shoulder to shoulder with professional firefighters. These volunteers balance all this with their daily lives—office work, family, and hobbies.
In a joint article by "NotMoscow Speaking" and It's My City, we speak with volunteers about their first experience extinguishing fires, their motivations for participating in the State Fire Service, disputes with skeptics, and the misunderstandings they encounter from others.
Victoria: "I don't want to die prematurely, I don't want my family to die prematurely."
Victoria is one of the coordinators and founders of Rapid Response Volunteers. She organizes training for new volunteers, field trips, and monitors hot spots, negotiates with volunteers, fire departments, forest rangers, and officials, oversees the procurement of supplies (such as respirators and gloves), and advises new firefighters on what to bring and wear when fighting fires. When the fire season subsides, she and other volunteers conduct educational events in schools and kindergartens.
Victoria is constantly in contact with journalists and talks about the latest forest and peat fires, petitions and appeals to the authorities with demands to reform the region's fire suppression system. She balances all this with her main job. Victoria works "in marketing," but doesn't want to talk about her profession. She also doesn't want to discuss any challenges at work related to her volunteer work. Because of these challenges, she asked that her last name not be used in this publication.
Victoria entered firefighting in 2021—a difficult year for firefighters. During the entire season, 1033 fires broke out in the Sverdlovsk region (twice as many as the previous year), and their area increased fivefold, exceeding 50 hectares. She wanted to plant trees on her street, and was advised to consult with members of the "Parks and Squares of Yekaterinburg" community. In an environmental activist chat, Victoria came across a message about a forest fire near her dacha, near Lake Glukhoye. According to media reports, firefighters were short of manpower and equipment, and the multi-day fire was just getting going. Victoria suggested that the activists go to the rescue of the official services.
"There was a certain level of despair and fear for our homeland, an attempt to personally understand what was happening," Victoria says.
She and another girl—they met on the way to the fire—arrived at Glukhoye Lake. There was a checkpoint on the way to the fire, and outsiders were not allowed in, but the volunteers managed to negotiate permission to help.
"We were transported by boat to the Avialesookhrana fire department. By the time they arrived, they'd been at the fire for days; the motorized trailer had sunk up to its cabin in the peat soil. They were expecting serious reinforcements in the form of 20 paratroopers and equipment, but instead, these girls showed up with a shovel... I even came with a bucket, my first time at a fire, and it was really funny."
Elena proved to be more experienced, arriving in the proper firefighting gear (thick-soled shoes, cotton clothing, and a mandatory respirator) and carrying her backpack forest fire extinguisher. She gave Victoria a brief safety briefing along the way. The Avialesookhrana firefighters looked at the girls skeptically, but continued to extinguish the fire, now side by side with their assistants, working together. edge, filled the volunteers' backpacks with water.
The girls expended considerable time and effort, fighting the fire for seven and a half hours, but the forest could not be saved. Her severe psychological state was compounded by her physical condition: due to her inexperience and lack of a respirator, Victoria inhaled smoke and felt extremely weak and nauseous on the way home. The next day, she couldn't get out of bed properly due to pain in her legs.
Despite her difficult initial experience, she continued to monitor the fires around Yekaterinburg and read about how the fire services were facing a severe shortage of personnel and equipment. She then decided to start educating people about what was happening and to organize a systematic volunteer movement that would work with the official services.
There had been volunteer communities in the region before that provided assistance during forest fires—search teams, off-road vehicle clubs, hunting and fishing clubs—but at the time, they were fairly closed, and information about their work during fires was simply not publicly available.
Along with other concerned citizens, mostly from the "Parks and Squares" chat, Victoria received training from experienced volunteers who had been extinguishing wildfires in other regions for many years. The volunteers then launched a fundraiser and purchased backpack forest fire extinguishers, helmets, and respirators. Since August 2021, the group has been responding to forest fires almost daily. They have Telegram chat, which has grown to 600 people in a year, and now has more than 1100 volunteers ready to go out to extinguish fires or assist firefighters by providing vehicles or monitoring hot spots. The volunteers also have telegram channel for 300 people, where they announce offline meetings and talk about their successes.
More than 100 volunteers from the DBR completed training organized by the Ural Forest Aviation Protection Base and the Landscape Fire Prevention Center. Afterward, they learned how to extinguish peat fires and purchased equipment (some with donations, mostly with their own money). Thus, a systematic volunteer movement with coordinators gradually emerged in the city.
“We tried to put out the fires in a more organized manner, tried to avoid situations where a large number of untrained volunteers would arrive at different times, run around putting things out haphazardly, and go off to soot"Our teams always went out with a senior, experienced volunteer who provided instructions, coordinated the team's actions, and liaised with the on-site firefighting commander," explains Victoria.
Over the years of coordinating the State Fire Bureau, Victoria has acquired a "professional deformation": when entering any forest, she first assesses how and how severely it will burn. She would like people to begin to perceive lighting fires in the forest as an "indecent activity"—as indecent as, say, throwing trash in the street. An exception, in her opinion, should be made only for designated fire areas, but these areas need to be closely monitored, and under current conditions, this is almost impossible due to a shortage of forest rangers and the understaffing of the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
Sometimes, Victoria doesn't hesitate to approach tourists and vacationers and reprimand them for lighting a fire. For example, if a fire is lit during a special fire safety regime, or if something is being burned in a specially protected natural area. She's called the police on occasion, but law enforcement doesn't always respond to such calls, even when restrictions are in place. Sometimes, Victoria says, she's had to argue with the police—they insist that it's not their job to punish people for lighting fires; that's the job of the Ministry of Emergency Situations inspectors. (This isn't true; according to Articles 23.25, 28.3, and 8.32 of the Russian Code of Administrative Offenses, officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, among others, can issue citations for violating fire safety regulations.) If she tries to call an EMERCOM fire inspector, she says, they might also fail to show up—the agency is severely short-staffed.
Victoria explains her motivation by concerns for the health of her family and friends. Urban smoke is detrimental to the respiratory system, and benzopyrene, released during peat combustion, is a potent carcinogen. Inhaling it increases our risk of cancer.
— Multi-day smoke according to statistics "It leads to excess mortality in the population, and I don't want to die prematurely, I don't want my family to die prematurely from some lung disease. I understand that I can't change the situation globally yet, but I would like to contribute to making a difference, so that more people are aware of the problem and don't make things worse," says Victoria.
Her family isn't very supportive of her "hobby"—volunteering takes up too much of their free time. At first, her family accompanied her to firefighting operations, but then they stopped. Victoria says they're "proud of her, but very worried" and believe professional firefighting services should handle the work.
"They say we pay taxes, and everyone should have their responsibilities, everyone contributes through their own professional development, and that's enough," Victoria explains her relatives' position. "It's a common point of view, and it's hard to argue with, but when the entire city is in smoke, and the familiar forest is disappearing before our eyes, what are you going to do? Some people just wait, but we want to figure it out. First and foremost, we want to figure out why the fire starts and why it doesn't go away."
When numerous forest and peat fires broke out around Yekaterinburg in 2021, and their number grew daily, Victoria began to wonder if they were being deliberately set. She also felt as if "the forests and fields were spontaneously combusting from the heat." Thanks to the educational work of experienced volunteer firefighters, Victoria realized that the primary cause of fires is humans. While humans may genuinely love nature and the forest, they don't fully understand that a poorly extinguished campfire on peat soil or a stray cigarette butt in dry grass is the very cause of a "sudden" forest fire.
There are also natural causes - volcanoes, meteorites, dry thunderstormsBut in the Urals, this list only includes dry thunderstorms, which can occasionally occur in the north of the Sverdlovsk region.
"Our fires are the result of carelessness, inattention, or ignorance, not deliberate arson, as conspiracy theorists might suggest. Spring grass fires lead to fires spreading into peatlands, which can burn for a very long time, unquenched by rain, and the smoldering peatlands produce heavy smoke and new forest fires during the drier period, in August. This vicious cycle needs to be broken," Victoria reflects.
In addition, in the region in recent years is steadily declining groundwater level, while there are dozens of them around the cities and towns of the Sverdlovsk region drained during the Soviet years Peatlands. Residents of the Urals, Victoria says, live like they're sitting on a "powder keg." Under these conditions, people are simply obliged to reconsider their habits and change their behavior in nature, and the authorities must do something about the drained peatlands, Victoria is convinced.
Another problem, according to the interviewee, is insufficient outreach to the public. DBR volunteers visit schools and kindergartens, conducting outdoor fire safety classes. They also give lectures on fire causes and fire safety to adults, as well as to various companies and organizations.
"In kindergarten and school classes, we show a picture of a forest, grass, the sun, and a bunny. We ask: What caused the forest fire? And everyone, without exception, says: 'The sun!' And we explain over and over again that the sun doesn't heat the peat, the soil, the trees, or the grass to the point where they catch fire. We need to calmly explain that the main cause of fire is humans," says Victoria.
Irina: "I'd like to not only take emotions and impressions, but also give something back."
Irina joined the volunteer firefighting movement in 2021 after seeing an announcement of an online course from Avialesookhrana. She attended lectures and completed assignments, and ultimately passed the exam with high scores. After the test, she went on her first field trip, a training one, with experts from an environmental organization.
— They showed us how it happens [to extinguish peat fires], how to take shelter from falling trees, how assemble a line"We were trained in how to extinguish peat fires and provided with the most necessary equipment. After that, we began making regular trips," the volunteer explains.
Last year, Irina's season began on May 9th. According to her, Victory Day was a true "war day": everything was burning, and helicopters were flying over the blazing forests. Volunteers were transported from one location to another by truck. There were no bodies of water near the fires, so the volunteers were forced to extinguish the flames with 20-kilogram backpacks filled with water.
— I'm an office worker with a silly 9-to-18 schedule, so I couldn't travel on weekdays, but I put out fires every weekend, all summer long. The only time I wasn't at the fires was when I went to Lake Ladoga, volunteer forest firefighters' camp“I wanted to live there and gain experience,” says Irina.
Her work has nothing to do with environmental protection or firefighting: she works for a company that supplies heavy equipment for road construction. Irina says volunteering doesn't interfere with her work, and her colleagues are supportive.
"At first, they were probably all in shock. Then, when I showed them photos and videos of the fires, they heard what was going on and started asking what I was doing. They might have gotten some intelligence from me when the city was covered in smoke," the girl says.
She found similar support at home. Irina has a husband and three children, and her youngest, 14-year-old daughter, is already interested in the volunteer firefighting movement. Last year, she started attending a "young rescuer" club, where children learn about fires, among other things.
- I think she will join us... — says Irina. - In four years! — Victoria interrupts sternly. — Only from age 18. It's difficult and unsafe. I often see stories where they show families going to fires, and children in sneakers running around and helping put them out. We can't support this.
People we barely know, the interviewee continues, don't always understand why people would dedicate their free time to extinguishing wildfires, and for free.
"When I was traveling to Lake Ladoga with four bags in a reserved seat carriage, my fellow passengers started asking questions. I told them about the volunteer camp and the firefighting efforts, and their first reaction was, 'Do you get paid for this?' People generally assume that someone does something if they're financially rewarded. "We get paid for this," says Irina.
"And we pay!" volunteer Olga adds jokingly.
Irina also completed first aid courses and regularly attends the project's conventions. Uralspas, where teams from different cities are placed in simulated emergency situations and tasked with rescuing "victims." According to Irina, firefighting trips are almost a weekly occurrence for Uralspas, where they can put their skills to use.
Irina explains her desire to devote so much time to firefighting by the fact that she is a "professional tourist." She regularly went hiking, skiing, and driving with her family to various parts of the country and abroad.
"I love nature very much. And I'd like to not only take in impressions and emotions from it, but also give something back. I look at all this beauty, walk through the forests and mountains, and I see that it's all suffering and dying. I can save a piece of this beauty so that after me, someone can come and see it all. My family sees the light in my eyes. Especially when there's some kind of result. When we arrive at a fire, everything is burning, smoking, and when we leave, everything is black, the burning one, but cold, no longer burning. That means something worked today..."
Pavel: "It's just a normal physical activity, like planting potatoes, just with smoke and special effects."
Pavel has worked at a defense company for 11 years, has been involved in sports tourism and mountaineering for many years, and frequently goes outdoors. He was a member of a hiking club. USTU-UPI, and became involved in the volunteer movement thanks to Irina Singh. He doesn't remember exactly how he joined the DBR, only that at one point he felt an "inner need" to start doing something useful, not just "going out into nature."
"When you reach a certain age, you start looking for meaning in what you do. I started lacking meaning, and I discovered this direction for myself—not just going to the forest and walking through it, but walking through it with a shovel, digging a swamp [and putting out fires]," Pavel explains.
He first volunteered for a wildfire in May 2023 and spent most of the season on field trips. His wife accompanied him, often serving as a photographer at the firefighting operations. This year, she will have to cancel her trips as she is expecting a baby.
Last year, Pavel and his wife were most often involved in extinguishing peat fires.
"Peat fires were predictable; they burn slowly. You arrive, calmly set up, and begin extinguishing the swamp. The swamp isn't going anywhere. I wouldn't say it's particularly difficult. I've lived my life like that, and it's not the most challenging thing I've ever done. It's a normal physical activity, like planting potatoes, just surrounded by smoke and special effects," says the volunteer.
Unlike many new volunteers, Pavel immediately prepared for trips and purchased equipment with special responsibility.
"Pavel came [to the DBR] very prepared, one of the few who had already read the theoretical materials and had prepared the appropriate footwear, helmet, and clothing. He's still very vigilant about safety precautions and tries to educate the others. After all, it's a fairly common mistake for newcomers to come in green." encephalitis"They blend into the landscape, and that's dangerous—if someone gets lost, it'll be very difficult to find them," comments Victoria, the DBR coordinator.
“It would be more correct to say that I don’t educate people,” Pavel objects, “but express my point of view.”
“Persistently,” Victoria clarifies.
“Persistently,” the volunteer agrees.
Pavel even started a Telegram channel where he reviews firefighting clothing and equipment, as well as the worthwhile and unworthwhile purchases for both beginner and experienced volunteers. Pavel asked that the channel's name be kept secret—he doesn't want people "out of the loop" to subscribe. He doesn't have many subscribers, but they include people from all over the country.
"People have a rather superficial approach to what interests them, and it's not just about firefighting. It's surprising: they seem interested, but for some reason they don't want to delve into it. Whatever they find, that's what they go for," Pavel says, perplexed.
Olga: “You understand that you can’t do anything about this dying forest except keep the forest around it alive.”
Olga became a volunteer in 2021. A friend, who had started volunteering before, invited her to her first forest firefighting mission near the village of Severka on Mount Kotel. the election — some candidates back then were building their campaigns around firefighting and organizing volunteer headquarters. Olga joined this "movement" simply out of a desire to change something and try to "bring the world back to order."
"Many people have taken up volunteering since COVID hit because it brings a little structure to our lives, gives us a sense of doing something and having an impact. The people who initially invited me to volunteer no longer do, but I still do. We've even formed interest groups and go on hikes together," she says.
Olga began actively attending fires in 2023, when she first encountered a peat fire and, according to her, it was these fires that "delayed the longest."
"For a volunteer, the forest is mostly about patrolling; volunteers rarely get to serious forest fires; I've never been there. You walk and breathe in this ugly forest, watching the trees fall deep within. It's quite a sad sight, because you realize you can't do anything except keep the forest around you alive. But you do stop a peat fire. The heroism that some people seek in order to fight fires also exists in peat," Olga explains.
She considers herself "almost fearless," but says she's encountered some frightening situations. Last year, a small group of volunteers gathered for a reconnaissance mission to a peat bog near the village of Shaidurikha. They parked the car and continued on foot, first through the forest, then reaching the swamp.
"The swamp was like something you see in a book, in pictures, with its bogs. Incredibly beautiful! You walk along and hear the trees, their roots burned, falling," Olga recalls. "I felt a sense of derealization, something chthonic and captivating. You understand why people sometimes go into the swamps and get lost there. It's captivating, and you get the urge to go further and further."
Olga often serves as the driver at the State Fire Brigade: her car is often used to deliver equipment to fire sites. But Olga doesn't drive a large GAZelle or even an all-terrain Niva, but a simple Skoda Fabia, which has to be filled to the brim with equipment—hoses, pumps, shovels, and picks.
For firefighting missions, Olga also learned to ride an ATV, in case the volunteers have the opportunity to purchase or borrow one. Unfortunately, the team doesn't have a permanent ATV yet, and the Skoda isn't suitable for all terrain, so sometimes the volunteers have to resort to unconventional measures, such as calling a cargo taxi through Yandex.
However, not every driver can take you to the fire site. Volunteers once ordered a van to the site of a peat bog fire in Kalinovsky Forest Park in northeast Yekaterinburg: the app indicated that the vehicle could reach the required point. However, once in the forest, the driver refused to carry the equipment further, and the volunteers had to carry it for two kilometers. Now, the DBR collects money for a large and roomy car, especially for going to fires, so that it is always “at hand”.
Olga is a housing and utilities engineer, and her job requires a lot of movement, so physically putting out fires is no problem. But mentally, it's challenging; sometimes she has to "deny herself" trips due to work commitments, as forest fires don't always break out at convenient times. As a result, a trip might simply be cancelled because no driver is available.
Thanks to the firefighting trips, the girl became interested in caving. She met one of the regular members of the caving group, who invited her and other members to go cave diving. Olga enjoyed it, and now regularly ventures into caves of varying difficulty (It's My City). published a report with one of the expeditions of Yekaterinburg speleologists, Olga was also a participant in that trip).
Not only have the speleologists drawn Olga into their group, but Olga is also trying to recruit them to join the volunteer team. So far, she's only managed to get one friend from expeditions interested in firefighting. Olga's son has also expressed interest in volunteering, but minors are not allowed to participate in firefighting activities; it's too dangerous and physically demanding, so for now, he's studying the theory.
Igor: "We went out to put out three fires a day."
Igor is 65 years old. He has worked as a high-rise painter, an electrician, a university professor, a school teacher, and has opened his own businesses in various fields. He has also been involved in sports his entire life. Along with a group of city sportsmen, he was one of the founders of Parkran In Yekaterinburg, he even trained with English instructors. Igor has now retired from racing—he retired three years ago to help his daughter care for her young grandson. Around the same time, in 2021, he first tried fighting forest fires.
"I grew up in the Ural nature, and since childhood I've been involved in rock climbing, orienteering, skiing, and cycling. I spent a lot of time outdoors, not just in the Urals. And I remember those fires even as a schoolboy, for example, in Devil's Fortress"They tried to put out the fire with branches. The problem of landscape fires—though I didn't know the names back then—had been ingrained in my subconscious since childhood. "Forests burning—it's sad. I saw the difference between a normal forest and what was left after a fire," says Igor.
In 2021, the man met several volunteers fighting a fire near Lake Ladoga on Facebook. He became interested and decided to join his new acquaintances at a volunteer firefighting camp on the Ladoga islands. Having never done anything like this before, he had to learn firefighting techniques for various types of wildfires from scratch.
Volunteers were fighting a fire in the Ladoga Skerries National Park. This is a system of islands covered in pine forests. In the summer, they are particularly vulnerable due to drought and tourists, who are not always careful with fire. Upon arriving, Igor provided communications for the firefighters: he is a communications specialist by training, and served in the army in this specialty. Igor stayed at the camp all summer and gradually began to participate in forest patrols and firefighting efforts.
“There was a catastrophic shortage of people; we were going out to put out three fires a day,” the volunteer recalls.
Igor joined the Ural volunteer firefighting community in September 2022, when he arrived in Yekaterinburg. Unlike the northwestern regions, where fires become significantly fewer in the fall, the forest fire season here is still ongoing. He went to fight forest and peat fires with local volunteers who had spontaneously formed that year.
Since 2021, Igor has participated in over 30 missions, not counting patrols, when volunteers travel to problem areas prone to fires. Every summer, he also travels to Lake Ladoga to help with firefighting efforts there, then returns to Yekaterinburg to volunteer there, most often at peat fires.
"Yes, in the peat bogs it's not as epic as in the forest. It's tedious and painstaking work." you drag the pump, dig the ground, "The volunteer explains. "And the forest is a complex place, morally speaking: when you finish the day, you don't always feel satisfied, because you have to leave behind a black landscape. On the one hand, you've accomplished something, worked hard, and are exhausted, but on the other hand, you're still leaving a ruin. And something will grow in this place in fifty years."
The volunteer is leaving for the Leningrad Region again soon, but plans to return to the Urals in July. He believes that after the lull in spring, problems will resume there in the summer. Currently, there are few wildfires in the Sverdlovsk Region due to cold weather, including snowfall in May, so the volunteers are on standby, focusing primarily on education.
Igor also attributes the relatively calm spring of 2024 to the good work of the Avialesookhrana last winter. He says that by April they were able to extinguish all smoldering peat bogs in the Sverdlovsk region using a new method: in winter, they dug up smoldering peat bogs by tractors.
"I don't understand why this isn't being talked about much, but it's actually a very significant development because, firstly, the method has been tested and it's effective. Secondly, for the first time in decades, the Sverdlovsk region had no significant outbreaks in April. So far, everything is just 'knock on wood.'"
Volunteers often encounter skeptics who disbelieve the benefits of fighting forest fires, believing them to be a natural process. Igor doesn't argue with such people online, as he considers online debates to be pointless. However, in person, he's happy to engage in discussion and argue his point of view.
"Everyone who's ever worked on firefighting says that nine out of ten landscape fires are caused by human error. All these dry thunderstorms are just a myth, far-fetched; in reality, their share is very small. Yes, nature seems to be self-cleaning, but the scale of this is orders of magnitude smaller, as evidenced by..." statistics "And scientific research," Igor comments. "If we don't put it out, cities will burn down. Here in the Urals, in Yekaterinburg, we also have a water problem; we've been walking a tightrope for the last thirty years. The rivers have become very shallow, and there's a drought every summer. We can argue over a beer all we want about whether we need to put it out, but we'll still go and put it out."
Author: Maria Rubinina
