Chernobyl is Burning (23 Pics)

Three days ago a 27-year old illegal visitor to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone was caught setting fires that quickly got out of control. Ukraine has had a warm dry winter which, when followed with a windy spring, makes for excellent wildfire conditions.

View from Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant looking to the southwest. The closest the fire has come to Pripyat and ChNPP has been about 2km, but this changes daily. So far a dozen small remaining villages, remnants from the evacuation and otherwise preserved until now, have burned.

Command center at a Zone checkpoint.

Looking East, the fire has burned all around the 500-foot tall DUGA radar complex and remains of the secret city of Chernobyl-2. It is unclear how much of this city has burned.

Mil Mi-8 helicopters with bambi buckets.

Fire crawling across the forest floor, biomass and dry grass on the ground allow for the fire to pass large breaks in the woods and move across the Zone.

Burning villages.

Mil Mi-8 helicopters with bambi buckets.

Mil Mi-8 helicopters with bambi buckets.

Typical ZIL firetruck. Based on a military truck of the same design, these are largely unchanged from the trucks used during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Firetrucks from the ChNPP and Chernobyl towns, as well as Kyiv and all over Ukraine have been called out.

Burning villages.