Fighting the fires has taken a heavy human and financial toll on the emergency services, with firemen working flat out to control the blazes, at a cost, according to officials, of at least 2,000 lats (2,846 euros, 3,546 dollars) a day.

"My men are running from a place to place. They dont have time to stop at the depot, they dont have time to eat or sleep," Ainars Pencis, of Latvia's fire and rescue service, told AFP.

The human toll has reached beyond the fatigue of emergency workers, with at least five people in Latvia killed by grass fires this year.

"Burning old grass is one of the darkest hangovers of laziness and narrow-mindedness we inherited from Soviet times," Latvian Environment Minister Raimonds Vejonis told AFP.

"It will take years to educate our people. In the meantime, we have to penalise those who set the fires, possibly even jail them."

The blazes are also a plague in other Baltic countries: in Lithuania, more than 4,000 grass fires have been registered since the beginning of the year, and at least six people have died because of the blazes.

The Lithuanian environment and interior ministries have begun daily helicopter flights to observe the fires. Aerial photographs will be taken to try to identify the owners of land where grass is being burnt.

The information will be passed on to institutions responsible for distributing EU aid to farmers, and those who illegally burn grass could have their financial assistance cut.

In Estonia, an elderly woman who sustained severe burns in a grass fire died of her injuries late last month. A complete ban on grass burning took effect in the most northerly of the Baltic states on April 21.

Even since the ban came into effect, Estonian fire crews have been called out around 700 times to tackle grass fires.

The fallout from the fires was not confined to the Baltic states.

Smog in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, at the end of last month was blamed on the grass fires burning across the Gulf of Finland in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and even further afield, in Russia and Belarus, Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat has reported.

"It's been years since I've seen as many grass fires as there are this year," Latvian fire chief Pencis said.

"Unfortunately spring is coming slowly this year, without the slightest bit of rain. I really regret that our people are so insane with fire. They dont understand its uncontrollable nature," he said.

The sour smell of burning grass hung over the Latvian capital, Riga, at the weekend, when emergency services reported at least 200 fires each day.

In a Riga suburb on Friday, 13-year-old Arturs and eight-year-old Ralfs, their front teeth blackened with ash, were trying to stamp out the flames of a grass fire burning in the back garden of an apartment block.

"We blame the big boys," the two youngsters said. "They have matches."

The flames were fanned by the wind until they were dangerously close to a car park full of vehicles. Eventually, a van of firemen arrived.

"All the big trucks are out fighting other fires," fireman Inguss said, his face grey and pale with fatigue.

On Sunday, Latvian Defence Minister Atis Slakteris said the army would step in to help the over-worked rescue workers.

"Our helicopters are ready to help put out fires, especially in dangerous situations, where grass fires could set forests on fire," Slakteris said on public radio.

But if the succinct statement of an emergency telephone line worker was anything to go by, the army's help could come too late.

"It's burning everywhere," an operator on rescue phone line 112 told AFP.

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