Читать книгу The Forgotten Heroes of Chernobyl - Udo Fehring - Страница 4

Saturday, April, 26, 1986

Kiev, Ukraine.

It was a beautiful spring day in Kiev, Ukraine. The sun was shining down from the sky and one got the impression that the summer was not far away.

Wadim and Oleg lived with their families in a block of flats in the suburbs of the town with beautiful gardens behind the houses.

Both were happily married: Wadim with Anna. They had a four-year-old daughter named Marusha. Oleg was married to Darja. They had two sons: Alexander was three and Mikhail five.

Both families did a lot together. On this Saturday, the families were at a kindergarten party. The women sold delicious, home-cooked food: for lunch there was Borschtsch, which, when it came to Wadim's opinion, no one could cook as well as his wife Anna. Darja helped Anna with the sale, because nearly everybody knew, how good Anna's borsch was and accordingly was the queue.

The men had "field service": Wadim had "service" on the barbeque and sold delicious sausages and meat balls and Oleg had set up a small parcours for Bobby cars, where the children had to show their skills.

Many parents had spread their picnic towels outside and shared their delicious food: salads, breads and cakes. The kids romped around in the grounds: swings and jungle gyms, which the fathers had maintained a week earlier.

It was just wonderful!

In the evening everybody fell into the bed quite exhausted, the fresh air and the exhausting day took their toll.

On Sunday both families went to church in the nearby Orthodox community as usual, especially as there was a children's service every Sunday that the children were always looking forward to.

Afterwards, the families decided to have a picnic in the greens of the Dnepr River, because they took a lot food back from the kindergarten the day before.

There, the children could play undisturbed and the adults were able to chat relaxed.

The weekend was then, as always, far too quickly over and it was again a working week ahead.

Wadim worked as a firefighter in a guard in northern Kiev. The work was satisfying: he enjoyed helping people with his work. But there have always been heavy moments in his working life when people could not be rescued from homes. And then he was not too bad to take advantage of psychological help for a short time to get rid of the negative thoughts and feelings. Because he knew that this was just as important in order to process his experiences and not bear with them forever.

Oleg worked as an engineer in a machine fabric, in a business park on the outskirts of Kiev. He had studied mechanical engineering. His company produces machines for forestry, which was an important source of income in the Ukraine.

Her wives, Anna and Darja, also worked part-time, because the kindergartens were well organized and welcomed the children already at the age of two.

Anna worked in a bakery in the neighborhood and also had a lot of joy in her work, especially in dealing with people who also appreciated her friendliness.

Darya worked in the Personnel Office of the city of Kiev and shared a job with another half-day worker.

In the evening, the families gathered for a dinner together. Everyone told about his or her experience of the day. In addition, always the radio turned on, actually more to listen to lively music than to receive news or information.

But this time there were disturbing news: foreign media reported that in Sweden much higher levels of radioactive radiation were measured. Unfortunately, no-one yet knew what triggered the rise in these values. The Ukrainian families in Kiev knew that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant with its four blocks stood very close to it. Actually, they did not hear much about Chernobyl, which concerned the safety of the reactor. And nobody knew if this was a good or a bad sign. Everyone was aware that news, especially those that left Ukraine or the Soviet Union in a bad light, was frequently censored. And so it was sometimes more objective to sometimes receive foreign channels.

Wadim and Anna expressed their sympathy and sympathized with the Swedish people. They were sure that the increased levels were also triggered by a nuclear accident in Sweden.

On the other hand, they were relieved that this

nuclear accident had not happened in their environment. And so their conversation quickly returned to the day's events.

The next day in the morning, both families sat together at breakfast. Curiously enough, Wadim once again heard to a western radio station, because he wanted to know how the news of the nuclear accident developed.

And in fact, there was news in this regard: that the Swedish authorities were now excluding that a nuclear accident happened in Sweden. The accident had to have happened elsewhere and only the radioactive cloud had moved towards Sweden. Weather experts were also consulted to analyze the air movements in the past few days to locate where the accident must have happened.

When Anna got home at noon, she immediately turned the radio on again. The English broadcaster was now almost constantly informing about the nuclear accident. The evidence probably indicated that it possible that it the accident happened in Chernobyl. The evaluations of the first satellite images showed that in the night to Saturday there had probably been a bigger explosion in block 4 of the nuclear power plant there.

Anna immediately ran to Darja, who already knew about that. The advice of experts on radioactivity was that the affected population should stock up on iodine-based tablets. These iodine tablets had the effect that the thyroid needed iodine was saturated with this natural iodine in the tablets and so the radioactive iodine, which was released in a reactor accident, would no longer been absorbed.

In front of the pharmacy, a long line had queued up and all in the queue had only one target: to buy iodine tablets.

It took half an hour until Anna and Darja had reached the counter. And indeed they got one of the last packs of iodine tablets. The pharmacist assured that he had already ordered more iodine tablets, but since these were currently hoarded in other parts of the country, he could not say yet, if and when he should get replenishment.

But for now, these packs should last for two weeks for both families.

Anna had heard that job pills needed to be taken very early if there was still no saturation of the thyroid with the radioactive iodine. Therefore, she gave Marusha the recommended daily allowance still in kindergarten when she picked her up there. The same did Darja with her children.

When the men came home, there was only one more topic: What had happened in Chernobyl? The official Soviet media had not commented anything yet.

Wadim decided to call friends in Pripyat, the city just next to the nuclear plant. Some of these friends even worked in the power plant. They ought to know, that was Wadim's thought. But none of these friends answered the phone. Actually, at least the wives or children should have been at home. But he could not reach anybody. Wadim became skeptical and his concerns grew.

The only thing that gave him hope for the situation of his family was that when the radioactive cloud from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which was 50 km north of Kiev, had moved to Sweden, that meant that it was not likely to have passed Kiev.

But that was only a small relief, because no one really knew about nuclear accidents, much less how radiation was released and spread.

Finally, on Tuesday evening, the Russian authorities reported that in the Chernobyl nuclear plant it happened an accident.

During the night to Saturday, the new turbogenerator emergency system of Unit 4 of the reactor was tested. For the test, the power had to be shut down. The reactor fell into a performance range where it became unstable. At this time, the reactor should have been shut down for safety reasons. Since this did not happen, it came in the course of this action to unforeseen events, which ultimately led to an explosion in reactor 4. (1)

The authorities assured, that the situation in the power plant was completely under control. Just to protect the nearby population in the unlikely event, the radio announcer pointed out, of threatening radiation exposure around the power plant, the population was evacuated as a precautionary measure.

As it turned out later, the evacuation was carried out under absolute time pressure. Each family had only two hours to pack all the important things until the buses picked them up. And, at the same time, no one knew that they would never see their homes and Pripyat again.

But now it was out: something had happened. However, Wadim also knew very well what he had to judge with phrases like "being completely in control". These formulations were used solely to calm down the population and not to inform them as desired.

Wadim turned to Anna: "Do you believe them?".

Anna answered, as Wadim had expected: "No word! Come on, tune to the English Channel again, maybe they know more now. "

Wadim turned the transmitter button until the used English voice can be heard again.

Wadim and Anna had both learned English at school and at that moment it was paying off.

Unfortunately, at the time, the British and Western authorities were still not aware of the causes and effects of the nuclear accident. They only learned that this accident was now classified as a Super-Worst-Case-Scenario, so called as the largest to be assumed accident.

Wadim reflected the news of the evacuation Pripyat again and suddenly he shook his head.

"What's going on?" Anna asked.

"I just imagined what it means to evacuate a city like Pripyat. Nearly 50,000 people live there. If all are evacuated at once, you need 1,000 buses. That's horrifying!"

Anna now understood that the situation there was more than serious. And Pripyat was only about 50 km away.

Wadim and Anna were also curious about how the Russian authorities would deal with the upcoming celebrations on May 1, which was a high public holiday in socialist countries with public parades, in which normally joyful children's groups participated.

Would they have the courage to cancel all parades in the affected area? Or would they, that would Wadim and Anna expected, suppress all the bad news about Chernobyl and act as if nothing had happened.

Wadim and Anna had hoped that with the formula of "Glasnost" praised under President Gorbatschov, which means openness and transparency, something would have changed with regard to negative reports as in this case. But obviously this was just eyewash. Wadim knew that the people under another president were the same and their thinking would not change so quickly. In particular, condemnation of guilt was still a so-called "no-go" in socialism. It was therefore doubtful that the whole truth of the nuclear accident had reached Gorbatschov.

Wadim's and Anna's decision was clear. They would not go to the parade and Marusha would not join the parade as well. They wanted to limit their open-air activities to a minimum in the next few days, if that was possible. At least until there was clarity that there was no danger to the Kiev population any more. And this message had to be confirmed by foreign authorities.

The next day Anna asked for a short talk with the kindergarten leader when she left her daughter in kindergarten. Because Anna wanted that Marusha should not play outside until further notice. The kindergarten leader showed understanding, because several parents had already expressed this wish before.

"You can be assured. We won’t let the children play outside the kindergarten. We ourselves are not comfortable being out in the fresh air, well-aware that the radiation levels may be extremely high."

Anna was at least comfortable with that.

Unfortunately, in addition to the short news from the Russian news broadcaster, there was still no news in other media. A short message from a few lines about the nuclear accident had "just" made it to the third page in Pravda, the largest newspaper in the Soviet Union.

In the evening, the Soviet Minister of Health gave a brief instruction to the Chernobyl population: Everyone should keep windows and doors closed, regularly take iodine tablets in the prescribed dose and, when entering their own apartment, put off their shoes on a wet mat in front of the door.

Wadim and Anna shook their heads once more. As if someone believed that it was possible to control the radiation and the impact of such by such lapidary measures and "lock out" the radiation outside their own four walls.

The celebrities for May, 1st in Kiev was not canceled as expected. To demonstrate how harmless the Soviet authorities continued to assess the situation, even a Politburo member and his whole family was sent to Kiev. According to the motto: If we send "our people" there, the situation could not be so bad.

Looking backward, the "non-refusal" of this grand parade and other celebrations should prove to be one of the biggest mistakes the authorities have made in connection with the disaster.

Finally, on May 2, there was news on Soviet television. In addition to the already evacuated city of Pripyat, all inhabitants were evacuated within a radius of 30 km from Chernobyl, which corresponded to another 130,000 people.

But what appalled Wadim and Anna even more was the finding of the weather experts who reported that the wind direction had changed from south-east to north, which meant that Kiev would soon see increased levels of radiation through the radioactive cloud.

Wadim and Anna were seriously considering migrating the city. Unfortunately, these plans unfortunately had to be "buried" again quickly. All train and flight tickets to get out of the city were sold out for the next few weeks. Unfortunately, they neither did not own a car, which meant that they were more or less "trapped" in Kiev.