Smog blankets Vilnius, health problems result

Smog which has enveloped Vilnius for more than a week is causing wide spread health problems. While other parts of Central Europe are recovering from severe flooding, Lithuania is suffering its worst recorded drought.

The effects on rural economies are likely to be profound, including lost harvests and poor conditions for the traditional planting of winter grains.

Normally even the most cosmopolitan of Lithuanians is an avid mushroom picker but this year the mushroom season never came.

Health care workers are reporting record numbers of people complaining of insect and snake bites, with wasps making the most of the unusually warm and dry conditions.

Patients reporting respiratory problems have noticeably increased in recent weeks, according to staff at Vilnius clinics. The amount of particles suspended in the air is reportedly three times the allowable norm, in some places reaching 10 times that amount. People with breathing problems are being instructed to place wet towels and curtains over closed doors and windows to act as filters, and to wear masks when leaving home.

Data from three of Vilnius' public health clinics suggest a 20 percent increase in patients complaining of respiratory problems, according to Asta Razmiene, head of Vilnius Public Health Center's department of public health protection.

"Now the whole city is affected by the smoke. We're collecting data on a daily basis from all health facilities - it's growing worse, and the figures are expected to rise," Razmiene told The Baltic Times.

The problem in Vilnius is the result of several peat bogs burning continuously on the outskirts of the city. Throughout Lithuania 73 peat bogs comprising more than 0.5 hectares are on fire.

Formed over thousands of years as swamps dried, many of the bogs are simply inaccessible to fire fighting crews, and even when fire engines can arrive on the scene, most of the blaze is under ground, requiring large amounts of water and time to extinguish.

Meanwhile Vilnius fire brigades are tackling brush fires within the city even as they fight to get the burning bogs under control.

In a normal summer Vilnius is a very green city, with lots of trees and green spaces interspersed between buildings and homes. But this year those green spaces have mostly turned a parched beige, and many of the city's avenues of trees look blighted and beleaguered. Nowhere is this more obvious than outside the presidential palace in the center of Vilnius. The large chestnuts making up a portion of the plaza in front of the old building appear robust, but just across the narrow street their unwatered colleagues have wilted - they have few leaves and a smaller number of chestnut pods.

Earlier this summer the local media reported the deaths of a large number of Japanese cherry trees donated by the Japanese Embassy and planted on the slope leading from the Lietuva Hotel to the right bank of the Neris River. While the municipality of Vilnius decided to operate several of the fountains in the city for the first time in a few years this summer in order to make the capital appear more elegant, no one remembered to water the Japanese saplings. Newspaper reports said those trees which survived the lack of water would never bloom again.

Similar scenes are being witnessed in many parts of northeastern Europe.

Peat bogs are also burning out of control in Latvia, according to Lithuanian fire fighting officials, and also across Lithuania's border with Belarus, sending smog into Lithuanian border villages.

In Moscow forest fires burning around the city have made life miserable for residents and reduced visibility to the point where air traffic is being redirected from the Russian capital's three main airports on its outskirts to even more remote locations.

Unless the situation change by Sept. 14, a natural disaster will be declared across Lithuania, say officials.

But Lithuanian Finance Minis-ter Dalia Grybauskaite warned against declaring a state of emergency, as this would bring into force a clause in controversial legislation which could severely damage the state's finances.

The law provides for the eventual compensation of savings deposits lost to ruble inflation and bank machinations in the early 1990s as Lithuania moved from the Soviet ruble to its own currency, the litas. In its latest version the law provides for the state to reimburse such deposits in the event of natural disasters.

If depositors take advantage of the opportunity to get what are considered frozen funds held by the Lithuanian state, the government might find itself unable to come up with the amounts involved, Grybauskaite warned.

In any case, there's no relief on the horizon any time soon. Weather forecasters predict no more than light rain in the coming days.