Avialesookhrana celebrates 85th anniversary

Avialesookhrana celebrates this year its 85th anniversary. It was established in July 7, 1931, when in the Gorky Region the first flight in order to detect a forest fire was performed on Po-2 aircraft. The main objective of Avialesookhrana is the detection and suppression of wildfires in hard-to-reach and remote areas. The area of ​​forest reserve of Russia is 1.1 billion hectares, and in the zone of ground monitoring there are only 88 million hectares, the rest of the territory is available just for aviation and space monitoring.

Today, the number of pilot-observers is 300 people, and the smoke jumpers are about 3.5 thousand people. The federal reserve of Avialesookhrana now consists of 700 people. The following year, the number of federal reserve is going to be increased up to 1,000 people.

In the period from 2011 to 2015, the pilots-observers of Avialesookhrana of Russia have detected about 40% of wildfires of all occurred on forest reserve lands that is more than 28 thousand units. With the participation of the smoke jumpers about 19 thousand wildfires or more than 30% of all wildfires were eliminated. 9.4 thousand fires were eliminated entirely by smoke jumpers in the hard-to-reach areas. The smoke jumpers have performed more than 16.5 thousand on-the-job jumps and more than 120 thousand descents for the fire.

Over the last 5 years the air firefighters of Avialesookhrana allowed of no a single case of fire spread to settlements and economic facilities. The fire spread on 204 settlements and objects of the economy, including major power lines, airports, oil depots and other strategic and potentially dangerous objects, is prevented. This year 12 settlements where 15.5 thousand people live have already been rescued.