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[NBCNews] Radiation levels in the Chernobyl exclusion zone spiked 17 times over the normal background reading on Sunday, the head of Ukraine’s ecological watchdog said Sunday, as forest fires blazed some 20 kilometers into the Chernobyl disaster area.
"There is bad news," ecological inspection chief Yegor Firsov wrote in a Facebook post from the closed Chernobyl region. "At the center of the fire, radiation levels are high [...] readings are 2.3, when the normal level is 0.14."
Firsov’s post included a video of a geiger counter, a device used to measure radiation levels.
According to Firsov, the alarming jump in radioactivity was only found in the center of the fire. In a later post on Sunday, he wrote that nuclear specialists had charted no increase to radiation levels in the capital Kyiv, located just 100 kilometers from the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
Ukrainian authorities said that the fire, which engulfed an area of more than 100 hectares (250 acres) over the weekend, was likely caused by human negligence. Firsov said that the blaze was likely the result of someone setting fire to grass, which then spread to trees.
A Ukrainian Emergency Services Ministry statement on August 6 said that the fire in the Chernobyl exclusion zone has been extinguished with the help of more than 100 firefighters, 26 vehicles, and one Mi-8 helicopter.
Radiation levels in the zone are within normal limits, the statement said.
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