[Green-Activist] republished: Land of the Dead - Chernobyl eyewitness accounts (a must read)

[Anne Goddard]

with (open and blind) copies to many and replublished on the Green Activist 
List via cut and paste from the attachment posted to the list previously. 
Both for readers convenience and to remove the danger of virus infection 
(via the opening of attachments) on your personal computer.

---------
to: nukefreeaus-internal at yahoogroups.com

Adam

words like these fire deep compassion within me, igniting such powerful 
empathy, that i fear my soul may simply burst.

the passion these "eye witness accounts" stirred is so powerful, i know, 
that nothing can hold it back...

these accounts allow me to fully understand that i must not ever rest until 
the nuclear industry is stopped.

after some more mourning, i know i will be stronger in my knowledge that we 
must win and we will win.

with a leaden heart, and a tear stained face...
thank you...

anne

 Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2006 11:42:33 +1000 (EST)
From: Adam Dempsey <adamjdempsey at yahoo.com.au>
Subject: Land of the Dead - Chernobyl eyewitness accounts (a must read)

(Apols if you've seen this before but well worth having for reference..) -
Adam

Land of the dead

On April 26 1986, the No 4 reactor at the Chernobyl power station blew
apart.
Facing nuclear disaster on an unprecedented scale, Soviet authorities tried
to contain the situation by sending thousands of ill-equipped men into a
radioactive maelstrom. In an extract from a new book by Russian journalist
Svetlana Alexievich, eyewitnesses recall the terrible human cost of a
catastrophe still unfolding today

Monday April 25, 2005
The Guardian

When a routine test went catastrophically wrong, a chain reaction went out
of control in No 4 reactor of Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine,
creating a fireball that blew off the reactor's 1,000-tonne
steel-and-concrete lid.
Burning graphite and hot reactor-core material ejected by the explosions
started numerous other fires, including some on the combustible tar roof of
the adjacent reactor unit. There were 31 fatalities as an immediate result
of the explosion and acute radiation exposure in fighting the fires, and
more than
200 cases of severe radiation sickness in the days that followed.

Evacuation of residents under the plume was delayed by the Soviet
authorities' unwillingness to admit the gravity of the incident. Eventually,
more than 100,000 people were evacuated from the surrounding area in Ukraine
and
Belarus.


In the week after the accident the Soviets poured thousands of untrained,
inadequately protected men into the breach. Bags of sand were dropped on to
the
reactor fire from the open doors of helicopters (analysts now think this did
more harm than good). When the fire finally stopped, men climbed on to the
roof
to clear the radioactive debris. The machines brought in broke down because
of
the radiation. The men barely lasted more than a few weeks, suffering
lingering, painful deaths.

But had this effort not been made, the disaster might have been much worse.
The
sarcophagus, designed by engineers from Leningrad, was manufactured in
absentia
- the plates assembled with the aid of robots and helicopters - and as a
result
there are fissures. Now known as the Cover, reactor No 4 still holds
approximately 20 tonnes of nuclear fuel in its lead-and-metal core. No one
knows what is happening with it.

For neighbouring Belarus, with a population of just 10 million, the nuclear
explosion was a national disaster: 70% of the radionucleides released in the
accident fell on Belarus. During the second world war, the Nazis destroyed
619
Belarussian villages, along with their inhabitants. As a result of fallout
from
Chernobyl, the country lost 485 villages and settlements. Of these, 70 have
been buried underground by clean-up teams known as "liquidators".

Today, one out of every five Belarussians lives on contaminated land. That
is
2.1 million people, of whom 700,000 are children. Because of the virtually
permanent presence of small doses of radiation around the "Zone", the number
of
people with cancer, neurological disorders and genetic mutations increases
with
each year.

Lyudmilla Ignatenko
Wife of fireman Vasily Ignatenko

We were newlyweds. We still walked around holding hands, even if we were
just
going to the store. I would say to him, "I love you." But I didn't know then
how much. I had no idea.

We lived in the dormitory of the fire station where he worked. There were
three
other young couples; we all shared a kitchen. On the ground floor they kept
the
trucks, the red fire trucks. That was his job.

One night I heard a noise. I looked out the window. He saw me. "Close the
window and go back to sleep. There's a fire at the reactor. I'll be back
soon."


I didn't see the explosion itself. Just the flames. Everything was radiant.
The
whole sky. A tall flame. And smoke. The heat was awful. And he's still not
back. The smoke was from the burning bitumen, which had covered the roof. He
said later it was like walking on tar.

They tried to beat down the flames. They kicked at the burning graphite with
their feet ... They weren't wearing their canvas gear. They went off just as
they were, in their shirt sleeves. No one told them.

At seven in the morning I was told he was in the hospital. I ran there but
the
police had already encircled it, and they weren't letting anyone through,
only
ambulances. The policemen shouted: "The ambulances are radioactive stay
away!"

I saw him. He was all swollen and puffed up. You could barely see his eyes.

"He needs milk. Lots of milk," my friend said. "They should drink at least
three litres each."

"But he doesn't like milk."

"He'll drink it now."

Many of the doctors and nurses in that hospital and especially the
orderlies,
would get sick themselves and die. But we didn't know that then.

I couldn't get into the hospital that evening. The doctor came out and said,
yes, they were flying to Moscow, but we needed to bring them their clothes.
The
clothes they'd worn at the station had been burned. The buses had stopped
running already and we ran across the city. We came running back with their
bags, but the plane was already gone. They tricked us.

It was a special hospital, for radiology, and you couldn't get in without a
pass. I gave some money to the woman at the door, and she said, "Go ahead."
Then I had to ask someone else, beg. Finally I'm sitting in the office of
the
head radiologist. Right away she asked: "Do you have kids?" What should I
tell
her? I can see already that I need to hide that I'm pregnant. They won't let
me
see him! It's good I'm thin, you can't really tell anything.

"Yes," I say.

"How many?" I'm thinking, I need to tell her two. If it's just one, she
won't
let me in.

"A boy and a girl."

"So you don't need to have any more. All right, listen: his central nervous
system is completely compromised, his skull is completely compromised."

OK, I'm thinking, so he'll be a little fidgety.

"And listen: if you start crying, I'll kick you out right away. No hugging
or
kissing. Don't even get near him. You have half an hour."

He looks so funny, he's got pyjamas on for a size 48, and he's a size 52.
The
sleeves are too short, the trousers are too short. But his face isn't
swollen
any more. They were given some sort of fluid. I say, "Where'd you run off
to?"
He wants to hug me. The doctor won't let him. "Sit, sit," she says. "No
hugging
in here."

On the very first day in the dormitory they measured me with a dosimeter. My
clothes, bag, purse, shoes - they were all "hot". And they took that all
away
from me right there. Even my underwear. The only thing they left was my
money.

He started to change; every day I met a brand-new person. The burns started
to
come to the surface. In his mouth, on his tongue, his cheeks - at first
there
were little lesions, and then they grew. It came off in layers - as white
film
... the colour of his face ... his body ... blue, red , grey-brown. And it's
all so very mine!

The only thing that saved me was it happened so fast; there wasn't any time
to
think, there wasn't any time to cry. It was a hospital for people with
serious
radiation poisoning. Fourteen days. In 14 days a person dies.

He was producing stools 25 to 30 times a day, with blood and mucous. His
skin
started cracking on his arms and legs. He became covered with boils. When he
turned his head, there'd be a clump of hair left on the pillow. I tried
joking:
"It's convenient, you don't need a comb." Soon they cut all their hair.

I tell the nurse: "He's dying." And she says to me: "What did you expect? He
got 1,600 roentgen. Four hundred is a lethal dose. You're sitting next to a
nuclear reactor."

When they all died, they refurbished the hospital. They scraped down the
walls
and dug up the parquet. When he died, they dressed him up in formal wear,
with
his service cap. They couldn't get shoes on him because his feet had swollen
up. They buried him barefoot. My love.

Sergei Vasilyevich Sobolev
Deputy head of the executive committee of the Shield of Chernobyl
Association

There was a moment when there was the danger of a nuclear explosion, and
they
had to get the water out from under the reactor, so that a mixture of
uranium
and graphite wouldn't get into it - with the water, they would have formed a
critical mass. The explosion would have been between three and five
megatons.
This would have meant that not only Kiev and Minsk, but a large part of
Europe
would have been uninhabitable. Can you imagine it? A European catastrophe.

So here was the task: who would dive in there and open the bolt on the
safety
valve? They promised them a car, an apartment, a dacha, aid for their
families
until the end of time. They searched for volunteers. And they found them!
The
boys dived, many times, and they opened that bolt, and the unit was given
7,000
roubles. They forgot about the cars and apartments they promised - that's
not
why they dived. These are people who came from a certain culture, the
culture
of the great achievement. They were a sacrifice.

And what about the soldiers who worked on the roof of the reactor? Two
hundred
and ten military units were thrown at the liquidation of the fallout of the
catastrophe, which equals about 340,000 military personnel. The ones
cleaning
the roof got it the worst. They had lead vests, but the radiation was coming
from below, and they weren't protected there. They were wearing ordinary,
cheap
imitation-leather boots. They spent about a minute and a half, two minutes
on
the roof each day, and then they were discharged, given a certificate and an
award - 100 roubles. And then they disappeared to the vast peripheries of
our
motherland. On the roof they gathered fuel and graphite from the reactor,
shards of concrete and metal.

It took about 20-30 seconds to fill a wheelbarrow, and then another 30
seconds
to throw the "garbage" off the roof. These special wheelbarrows weighed 40
kilos just by themselves. So you can picture it: a lead vest, masks, the
wheelbarrows, and insane speed.

In the museum in Kiev they have a mould of graphite the size of a soldier's
cap; they say that if it were real it would weigh 16 kilos, that's how dense
and heavy graphite is. The radio-controlled machines they used often failed
to
carry out commands or did the opposite of what they were supposed to do,
because their electronics were disrupted by the high radiation. The most
reliable "robots" were the soldiers. They were christened the "green robots"
[from the colour of their uniforms]. Some 3,600 soldiers worked on the roof
of
the ruined reactor. They slept on the ground in tents. They were young guys.

These people don't exist any more, just the documents in our museum, with
their
names.

Eduard Borisovich Korotkov
Helicopter pilot

I was scared before I went there. But then when I got there the fear went
away.
It was all orders, work, tasks. I wanted to see the reactor from above, from
a
helicopter - to see what had really happened in there. But that was
forbidden.
On my medical card they wrote that I got 21 roentgen, but I'm not sure
that's
right. Some days there'd be 80 roentgen, some days 120. Sometimes at night
I'd
circle over the reactor for two hours.

I talked to some scientists. One told me: "I could lick your helicopter with
my
tongue and nothing would happen to me." Another said: "You're flying without
protection? You don't want to live too long? Big mistake! Cover yourselves!"
We
lined the helicopter seats with lead, made ourselves some lead vests, but it
turns out those protect you from one set of rays, but not from another. We
flew
from morning to night. There was nothing spectacular in it. Just work, hard
work. At night we watched television - the World Cup was on, so we talked a
lot
about football.

I guess it must have been three years later. One of the guys got sick, then
another. Someone died. Another went insane and killed himself. That's when
we
started thinking.

I didn't tell my parents I'd been sent to Chernobyl. My brother happened to
be
reading Izvestia one day and saw my picture. He brought it to our mum.
"Look,"
he said, "he's a hero!" My mother started crying.

Aleksandr Kudryagin
Liquidator

We had good jokes. Here's one: an American robot is on the roof for five
minutes, and then it breaks down. The Japanese robot is on the roof for five
minutes, and then breaks down.

The Russian robot is up there two hours! Then a command comes in over the
loudspeaker: "Private Ivanov! In two hours, you're welcome to come down and
have a cigarette break."

Ha-ha!

Nikolai Fomich Kalugin
Father

We didn't just lose a town, we lost our whole lives. We left on the third
day.
The reactor was on fire. I remember one of my friends saying, "It smells of
reactor." It was an indescribable smell.

They announced over the radio that you couldn't take your belongings! All
right, I won't take all my belongings, I'll take just one belonging. I need
to
take my door off the apartment and take it with me. I can't leave the door.
It's our talisman, it's a family relic. My father lay on this door. I don't
know whose tradition this is, but my mother told me that the deceased must
be
placed to lie on the door of his home.

I took it with me, that door - at night, on a motorcycle, through the woods.
It
was two years later, when our apartment had already been looted and emptied.
The police were chasing me. "We'll shoot! We'll shoot!" They thought I was a
thief. That's how I stole the door from my own home.

I took my daughter and my wife to the hospital. They had black spots all
over
their bodies. These spots would appear, then disappear. They were about the
size of a five-kopek coin. But nothing hurt. They did some tests on them. My
daughter was six-years-old. I'm putting her to bed, and she whispers in my
ear:
"Daddy, I want to live, I'm still little." And I had thought she didn't
understand anything.

Can you picture seven little girls shaved bald in one room? There were seven
of
them in the hospital room ... My wife couldn't take it. "It'd be better for
her
to die than to suffer like this. Or for me to die, so that I don't have to
watch any more."

We put her on the door ... on the door that my father lay on. Until they
brought a little coffin. It was small, like the box for a large doll.

I want to bear witness: my daughter died from Chernobyl. And they want us to
forget about it.

Arkady Filin
Liquidator

You immediately found yourself in this fantastic world, where the apocalypse
met the stone age. We lived in the forest, in tents, 200km from the reactor,
like partisans.

We were between 25 and 40; some of us had university degrees or diplomas.
I'm a
history teacher, for example. Instead of machine guns they gave us shovels.
We
buried trash heaps and gardens. The women in the villages watched us and
crossed themselves. We had gloves, respirators and surgical robes. The sun
beat
down on us. We showed up in their yards like demons. They didn't understand
why
we had to bury their gardens, rip up their garlic and cabbage when it looked
like ordinary garlic and ordinary cabbage. The old women would cross
themselves
and say, "Boys, what is this - is it the end of the world?"

In the house the stove's on, the lard is frying. You put a dosimeter to it,
and
you find it's not a stove, it's a little nuclear reactor.

I saw a man who watched his house get buried. We buried houses, wells,
trees.
We buried the earth. We'd cut things down, roll them up into big plastic
sheets. We buried the forest. We sawed the trees into 1.5m pieces and packed
them in Cellophane and threw them into graves.

I couldn't sleep at night. I'd close my eyes and see something black moving,
turning over - as if it were alive - live tracts of land, with insects,
spiders, worms. I didn't know any of them, their names, just insects,
spiders,
ants. And they were small and big, yellow and black, all different colours.

One of the poets says somewhere that animals are a different people. I
killed
them by the ten, by the hundred, thousand, not even knowing what they were
called. I destroyed their houses, their secrets. And buried them. Buried
them.

Vanya Kovarov
12

I'm 12 years old and I'm an invalid. The mailman brings two pension cheques
to
our house - for me and my grandad.

When the girls in my class found out that I had cancer of the blood, they
were
afraid to sit next to me. They didn't want to touch me.

The doctors said that I got sick because my father worked at Chernobyl. And
after that I was born. I love my father.

Ivan Nikolaevich Zhykhov
Chemical engineer

We dug up the diseased top layer of soil, loaded it into cars and took it to
waste burial sites. I hought that a waste burial site was a complex,
engineered
construction, but it turned out to be an ordinary pit. We picked up the
earth
and rolled it, like big rugs. We'd pick up the whole green mass of it, with
grass, flowers, roots. It was work for madmen.

If we weren't drinking like crazy every night, I doubt we'd have been able
to
take it. Our psyches would have broken down. We created hundreds of
kilometres
of torn-up, fallow earth.

There was an emphasis on our being heroes. Once a week someone who was
digging
really well would receive a certificate of merit before all the other men.
The
Soviet Union's best grave digger. It was crazy.

· These are edited excerpts from Voices From Chernobyl, by Svetlana
Alexievich,
published by Dalkey Archive Press




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Today's Topics:

   1. to Adam, re Land of the Dead - Chernobyl eyewitness accounts
      (a must read) (via nuke int aus list) (Anne Goddard)
   2. Marshall Island survivor declaration at 20th anniversay of
      Chernobly (Raulmax at aol.com)



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