From Fires to Fish, Heat Wave Batters Russia
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This is a country that knows how to handle the cold, swaggering about during the most brutal of winters. But the heat is another story. And there has never been heat like this.
James Hill for The New York Times
Workers moved trout into pools cooler than where they were being kept at the Biserovsky fish farm outside of Moscow.
Without the benefit of air conditioning, many Russian have sought refuge from the heat wherever they can find it.
Here is how extreme it has become: Oymyakon in Eastern Siberia is considered one of the coldest places on Earth, with winter temperatures dropping to as low as minus 90 degrees. On Thursday, the thermometer also read 90 degrees. Plus 90. In the evening.
Much of Russia has been reeling. Forest fires have erupted. Drought has ruined millions of acres of wheat. More than 2,000 people have died from drowning in rivers, reservoirs and elsewhere in July and June, often after seeking relief from the heat while intoxicated. In Moscow alone, the number of such deaths has tripled in comparison with last year, officials said.
All week long, temperatures have been soaring to records, and on Thursday, they reached a new high for Moscow, 100 degrees. July has been the hottest month since the city began taking such measurements under the czars, 130 years ago, officials said.
At the Biserovsky Fish Farm in this suburb of Moscow, Ivan Tyurkin trudged along a pier and surveyed the breeding ponds all around him. He did not need a thermometer to figure out that the water was treacherously tepid. Dead trout, drifting like buoys, were evidence enough.
Last month, they were flipping and flopping and leaping, and Mr. Tyurkin was readying for another bountiful harvest. Now, with the weather finding seemingly endless ways of wreaking havoc across the country, the farm was in crisis.
“This is all just very difficult to believe,” Mr. Tyurkin said.
“There has never been a summer like this,” he said. “Never. Not once.”
That is a widely held view in Russia. New York, Washington and many other cities in the United States have certainly suffered from their own heat waves. But most Russians do not have air-conditioners, reasoning that they are not worth the investment given the typical summers here.
As if the heat were not enough, Moscow has lately been coated with a patina of smoke from fires that have broken out in dried-up peat bogs in the suburbs. Throw open a window in a desperate bid to catch a breeze and the unpleasant smell of smoke bounds in. One of the country’s chief medical authorities estimated that walking around Moscow for a few hours was the equivalent of smoking a pack or two of cigarettes.
A little respite from the heat is expected on Friday, when the temperatures are predicted to drop to 88 degrees in Moscow, but next week they may jump to 100 again.
When the heat wave hit Russia, agriculture seemed the first to fall victim across much of the country, with officials predicting that grain production could decline by as much as 25 percent. Now, fish farms like Biserovsky are struggling to keep their stocks alive.
Here in the village of Rybkhoz, a name derived from the Russian words for “fish production,” the artificial ponds have been nurturing fish for local consumption since Nikita Khrushchev’s time.
Trout is a relatively new venture for the Biserovsky farm, underscoring Moscow’s prosperity. In Soviet times, trout — let alone fresh trout — was viewed as a delicacy, but these days, it is much more available. It often retails for $5 to $7 a pound.
Biserovsky also produces carp, which is heartier and able to endure warm water, so that harvest is not at risk — at least not yet.
The farm said it had been expecting to harvest 100 tons of trout this year. Some died. The rest were prematurely sold — often at deep discounts — before they could be killed by the rising temperatures. About 30 percent of the live fish were in such bad shape that they could be used only for fish meal and other low-grade products.
With the current harvest gone, Mr. Tyurkin, who oversees the trout ponds at Biserovsky, has been intent on rescuing next year’s stock. His workers have been crowding the juvenile fish into a single pond that they have tried to cool down, as if it were a refugee camp for survivors of a great meteorological cataclysm.
“We realize that this may not have a great chance of succeeding, but if we don’t do this, they won’t have any chance at all,” Mr. Tyurkin said.
He explained that trout thrive in water that is 55 to 62 degrees. In recent days, the water temperature has spiked to as high as 85 degrees near the surface. The trout swim deeper to seek cooler water, but the lower they go, the less oxygen is available. They either overheat or suffocate.
Yuri Baranov, Biserovsky’s marketing director, said the heat had even paralyzed the farm’s ability to receive shipments of live trout that are raised elsewhere and then trucked here to be fattened up to their sale weight, usually about two pounds.
“All around Russia, even in the north, they are having the same problems,” Mr. Baranov said.
For now, the Biserovsky workers are pumping air into the ponds for the remaining stock, as well as circulating cooler water sucked up from the depths.
Mr. Tyurkin, with his expansive belly and equally expansive manner of talking about fish, was clearly pained by it all.
“These are like my children,” he said. “We see them when they are little hatchlings, then we watch them grow. And normally, you see the result of our work. But now, just look at this. They start dying, they float, and that’s it.”
Much of Russia has been reeling. Forest fires have erupted. Drought has ruined millions of acres of wheat. More than 2,000 people have died from drowning in rivers, reservoirs and elsewhere in July and June, often after seeking relief from the heat while intoxicated. In Moscow alone, the number of such deaths has tripled in comparison with last year, officials said.
All week long, temperatures have been soaring to records, and on Thursday, they reached a new high for Moscow, 100 degrees. July has been the hottest month since the city began taking such measurements under the czars, 130 years ago, officials said.
At the Biserovsky Fish Farm in this suburb of Moscow, Ivan Tyurkin trudged along a pier and surveyed the breeding ponds all around him. He did not need a thermometer to figure out that the water was treacherously tepid. Dead trout, drifting like buoys, were evidence enough.
Last month, they were flipping and flopping and leaping, and Mr. Tyurkin was readying for another bountiful harvest. Now, with the weather finding seemingly endless ways of wreaking havoc across the country, the farm was in crisis.
“This is all just very difficult to believe,” Mr. Tyurkin said.
“There has never been a summer like this,” he said. “Never. Not once.”
That is a widely held view in Russia. New York, Washington and many other cities in the United States have certainly suffered from their own heat waves. But most Russians do not have air-conditioners, reasoning that they are not worth the investment given the typical summers here.
As if the heat were not enough, Moscow has lately been coated with a patina of smoke from fires that have broken out in dried-up peat bogs in the suburbs. Throw open a window in a desperate bid to catch a breeze and the unpleasant smell of smoke bounds in. One of the country’s chief medical authorities estimated that walking around Moscow for a few hours was the equivalent of smoking a pack or two of cigarettes.
A little respite from the heat is expected on Friday, when the temperatures are predicted to drop to 88 degrees in Moscow, but next week they may jump to 100 again.
When the heat wave hit Russia, agriculture seemed the first to fall victim across much of the country, with officials predicting that grain production could decline by as much as 25 percent. Now, fish farms like Biserovsky are struggling to keep their stocks alive.
Here in the village of Rybkhoz, a name derived from the Russian words for “fish production,” the artificial ponds have been nurturing fish for local consumption since Nikita Khrushchev’s time.
Trout is a relatively new venture for the Biserovsky farm, underscoring Moscow’s prosperity. In Soviet times, trout — let alone fresh trout — was viewed as a delicacy, but these days, it is much more available. It often retails for $5 to $7 a pound.
Biserovsky also produces carp, which is heartier and able to endure warm water, so that harvest is not at risk — at least not yet.
The farm said it had been expecting to harvest 100 tons of trout this year. Some died. The rest were prematurely sold — often at deep discounts — before they could be killed by the rising temperatures. About 30 percent of the live fish were in such bad shape that they could be used only for fish meal and other low-grade products.
With the current harvest gone, Mr. Tyurkin, who oversees the trout ponds at Biserovsky, has been intent on rescuing next year’s stock. His workers have been crowding the juvenile fish into a single pond that they have tried to cool down, as if it were a refugee camp for survivors of a great meteorological cataclysm.
“We realize that this may not have a great chance of succeeding, but if we don’t do this, they won’t have any chance at all,” Mr. Tyurkin said.
He explained that trout thrive in water that is 55 to 62 degrees. In recent days, the water temperature has spiked to as high as 85 degrees near the surface. The trout swim deeper to seek cooler water, but the lower they go, the less oxygen is available. They either overheat or suffocate.
Yuri Baranov, Biserovsky’s marketing director, said the heat had even paralyzed the farm’s ability to receive shipments of live trout that are raised elsewhere and then trucked here to be fattened up to their sale weight, usually about two pounds.
“All around Russia, even in the north, they are having the same problems,” Mr. Baranov said.
For now, the Biserovsky workers are pumping air into the ponds for the remaining stock, as well as circulating cooler water sucked up from the depths.
Mr. Tyurkin, with his expansive belly and equally expansive manner of talking about fish, was clearly pained by it all.
“These are like my children,” he said. “We see them when they are little hatchlings, then we watch them grow. And normally, you see the result of our work. But now, just look at this. They start dying, they float, and that’s it.”
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