Russian Emergency Minister reports to State Duma

Since the beginning of the year Russia has witnessed 397 serious emergencies and catastrophes that inflicted harm on 8,608 people. 409 people died.

These figures were given by Russian Minister for Civil Defence, Emergency and Natural Calamity Management Sergei Shoigu who spoke at the "government hour" at the plenary session of the State Duma on Wednesday.

Among the registered emergencies, 313 were industrial, 77 natural and 7 of bio-social nature, the minister said.

Up to 16,000 people die annually in fire in dwelling sector, which is 80 per cent of the total number of victims to emergencies.

The Russian government is carrying out a package of preventive organizational and engineering-technical measures to cut the risk and reduce the consequences of industrial and natural emergencies, Shoigu pointed out.

Since 2002 the Emergency Ministry has been consistently introducing legal, organizational, economic, social, scientific and technical measures to increase the efficiency of its work, he said.

As a result, this year the ministry managed to prevent the negative consequences of floods and to significantly reduce the number of forest and peat fires, Shoigu pointed out. Annually the ministry's employees save lives of 72,000 people.