Wednesday 11 August 2010

naukograd

The unquelled wildfires are still raging in Russia and neighboring lands and it is a terrible and unprecedented tragedy, deadly smog settling over cities and villages wiped away.  Now the greatest urgency seems focused on minimizing potentially catastrophic and lingering damage if the fires reach nuclear research and processing facilities at Mayak--Russian for "lighthouse."  In the midst of all these tragedies that are pinned to failures of something called crisis management, which I guess is a new discipline like managed health care, it is amazing to me how what was buried and forgotten is unearthed and strewn about.  A nearby closed-town, a restricted area for plant workers that is not accessible to the public and probably did not appear on any map, suffered major environmental damage in the past and emblazoned it on its city coat-of-arms as a radio-active, glowing salamander.  The fires are out-of-control all over, but authorities especially want to ensure that latent radiation is not reawakened and spread, like that godzilla salamander or Springfield's three-eyed fish.  I wonder how often these unnamed towns are on the public radar without the spotlight of imminent disaster.  Buried in the distant past, I wonder how much awareness there is even for enviromentalists, residents and the people who keep tabs on the nuclear posturing.  I hope Russia can cope and recover, and maybe take a leading role with such crisis management in the future.