More than 100 soldiers from a Moscow Military District battalion, using over 50 pieces of equipment, laid a water pipeline on the border of the Moscow and Ryazan regions.
More than 100 soldiers from a Moscow Military District battalion, using over 50 pieces of equipment, laid a water pipeline on the border of the Moscow and Ryazan regions.
Peat bog fires have been raging here for several weeks, with flames threatening towns and villages around the capital.
Fire crews save a lot of time if they can get water not from the surrounding towns, but directly from a pipeline laid closer to the forest, next to a hotspot, a military spokesperson said.
In three days, soldiers have laid nine kilometers of steel pipes.
The standard rate of laying pipes is 250 meters in seven minutes but could not be maintained because of the difficult terrain and dense haze.
The laying process turned into an automatic routine.
The principle is simple: a pumping unit pumps water from the Oka River to send it along a water pipe to the burning peat bogs.
Given favorable conditions and engineering equipment, a battalion can lay up to 30 kilometers of pipes.
This is not the first time that the Army has been involved in putting out fires. In 1972, more than 350,000 people were recruited to battle fires, including 100,000 service personnel. Pipeline teams of military and civil defense units were deployed, complete with tens of thousands of pieces of equipment. The amount of water poured on the fire from the air and pumped into burning peat bogs by means of pipelines reached 90,000 tons a day.
