Russia mobilizes army to fight fires that kill 25 in record heat wave

MOSCOW — Vast sections of Russia were under a state of emergency Friday as more than 10,000 firefighters fought to save villages and forests from being reduced to ash during the country's hottest summer on record.

At least 25 deaths were reported in the past two days, and the Kremlin called out the army to help as fires raged over 214,136 acres of woodland and peat bog.

More than 1,000 homes were destroyed and thousands of people forced to flee as blazes left their houses in smoldering ruins and filled the air with smog and ash.

Weeping women greeted Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as he visited Verkhnyaya Vereya, a village where all 341 homes were burned to the ground and five residents were killed.

The village, one of three hamlets destroyed around Nizhny Novgorod, Russia's fifth-largest city some 300 miles east of Moscow, resembled a ghost town.

Officials declared a state of emergency in 27 of Russia's 83 regions, with the hardest-hit being the Moscow region — which doesn't include the city — and other areas south and east of the capital, including the Voronezh, Ryazan, Lipetsk and Nizhny Novgorod regions.

In all, nearly 2.5 million acres have been consumed by wildfires this season.

Weather experts say that as global warming intensifies, Russians unaccustomed to such heat should brace for more summers like this. The mercury hit 100 in Moscow on Thursday, setting a record, and July was the hottest month recorded in Russia.

"In 130 years of daily weather monitoring in Moscow, there has never been such a hot summer," said Alexei Lyakhov, director of Moscow's Meteorological Service. "This is not normal weather; this has never happened."