A new wave of wildfires killed one person and destroyed at least 60 buildings Thursday, as strong winds fanned flames in the Volgograd region, parched by its worst drought on record, an official said.
Wildfires destroyed thousands of homes and killed at least 54 people in central Russia in August after the worst heat wave since records began destroyed crops covering an area the size of Portugal.
Fires on Thursday destroyed at least 60 buildings, many of them residential, in four separate districts of the Volgograd region, local Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Yelena Rodionova said. One man was killed when a fire in a nearby forest spread to his house, she said.
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