August 23, 2010
Voice of Russia - This Monday, Ryazan southeast of Moscow became the last Russian region where President Medvedev lifted a state of emergency introduced for dealing with the disaster.
The fires resulted in over 50 deaths, burned a million hectares of woodland and peat bogs and destroyed close to 25 hundred houses. Confronting them were thousands of Russian firefighters, volunteers and troops and some 500 international firefighting experts.
The capital Moscow spent two weeks in thick acrid smog.
The Russian government disbursed 5 billion roubles for post-fire reconstruction and aid.
