The accident, or rather the
catastrophe that took place was the biggest technological
disaster in human history. The accident affected all of Ukraine, all the systems in Russia and the USSR and other countries too, so in my opinion, the people who
contained the damage actually saved the whole world. I devoted my life to building
power stations and nuclear reactors. The Chernobyl reactor
was the last I built. For many years I tried to forget it. It was a childhood trauma
and I didn't tell anyone about it. I'm still afraid. It still haunts me. The Chernobyl disaster
still affects people. People who are suffering,
dealing with illnesses, people who are dying. Since I came back the
doctors did their best to help me. I had two strokes here. The blood vessels in my head
were damaged by the accident. It haunts me. When night falls horrible
memories of Chernobyl come to me and I can't fall asleep
because it keeps haunting me. Every day. On the day of the disaster, I woke up in the morning, it was
a Friday, I had school that day, so I went to school as usual. But on the way to school I saw
lots of ambulances and machines washing the streets with some
chemical, some kind of foam, it looked like snow all
over the street. It was foam. A chemical. This was unusual. They usually just used water. That was peculiar. And when I
got there, no one was around. The school was closed
and I didn't understand why. There was no announcement
that there was no school. When I got to school
the door was closed. There was no one outside. I stood there for a few minutes
and knocked on the door, then they opened the
door and they let me in. I went to my classroom
and saw kids there. Some were crying because
their parents were on duty at the reactor that night
and they didn't come home. I only found out about the
accident at the Chernobyl station three or four days later, when they had to tell
the whole world about it. because the radiation had
already reached Sweden. We all had no idea about it,
neither the army nor the civilians. There was a call: The
roof of Reactor 4 is on fire! The station was secured
by a military firefighting unit. If a nuclear station is on fire, that's the biggest emergency there is. The first to arrive were
two firefighting units who were a 5-minute drive
away and they went right to work. They were the first ones
to make it to the reactor - every single one of them died. Of course all the people working
there, they were so horribly burned; none of them survived. Obviously none of them survived. I don't know when I
slept for the first time, when we ate for the first time. I can't remember. I only remember the young men,
the soldiers coming in with burns. And we thought, "Where is he
going? To the helicopter or to Kiev? "Where is he going?"
That's all we could think of. None of us knew what to
do. We didn't know what... what radiation was. None of us had ever seen such a thing. It was like we were at war - so tragic, so horrific. So many people, so much chaos. There were people on the
floor....So many people everywhere. I knew the reactor had exploded, and that radiation began to
spread all around into the air. When radiation rises in the air
it's like detonating an atomic bomb; the shock wave collapsed the
reactor roof and destroyed the reactor, which, as you know, made the
graphite fly all the way to Reactor 3. There was graphite everywhere. On the night between April 25th and 26th I
was operations commander of the brigade. I had a whole control
room with instruments but our instruments
didn't show anything. They didn't show that the
radiation was increasing so we didn't know a thing. But when we went outside, we saw that around the
puddles left by the rain some substance had accumulated. I figured, naturally, that it was
pollen from the surrounding trees. I actually think it
was nuclear fallout. At the time we thought it
was pollen, and the truth is, neither regional HQ nor
the brigade commander told us there'd been an
accident at the reactor. The foreman found me
and told me to move out. So I went. I had no idea the
situation was so bad, that the radiation level was so high. Who knew? Who said anything? Everything was top-secret. We were the greatest country, we had to catch up with
and beat America and so on. The government
gave us no information, nothing on the radio
or TV, only rumors. Some said there was a malfunction, some said there was
an explosion, a fire. We had no idea what happened -- we were given no information,
so we decided to go ourselves and see what was happening. So my father took
all the kids, four kids, my mom was busy at home, and we went to the
stadium in Pripyat. It was a fairly open space and
we could see the reactor from there. And I saw... Because it was daytime I
couldn't really see the flames, but I saw the smoke, black smoke coming out, and I saw lots of helicopters and
planes and cars and military men on the way to the reactor. It was then that we realized... a disaster had occurred. When we got to Chernobyl
they sent me straight to City Hall. At City Hall they told me: Your mission is to check
vehicles and prevent any disorder, shouting, disturbances and so on. We secured the area.
What does that mean? It means we checked
vehicles going in and out, we escorted buses carrying the
evacuated people and children and we caught looters. I only remember being in
Pripyat, nothing before that. So my whole life began there... I went to kindergarten and
school there, I grew up there until the disaster happened. All the families living in town had
something to do with the reactor. Some worked there, some
worked in town, in the schools, but they all had some connection. It was the town's whole purpose. There were plenty of families,
and most of them had many children. And because of that, we had
lots of kindergartens and schools. I was in third grade. In the
morning I went to elementary school, and around noon I
went to art school. I had lots of friends there,
it was a wonderful life, you could even call it perfect. I didn't see what was happening
around me, maybe it was just... because I was a child,
but that's how I remember it. It was a special town. A woman in labor came in. She was giving birth
so we took care of her. Before that, the same woman,
who was married to a fireman, stood on her balcony and
watched the reactor explode and had been in constant contact
with the radiation for 24 hours. And when the baby came out, it was black. That was the first incident. A few hours later another
girl in labor came in. She gave birth but
the baby was dead. After that all the pregnant
women, at every stage of pregnancy, were called in for
emergency examinations and when they were all examined, which was done very quickly
because time was of the essence, time determined who'd
live and who'd die; the women were in a terrible state. What we saw inside, with all the fetuses,
it was exactly like in the books... all the heart defects,
the eyes, the limbs. Within just a few hours all
those babies were contaminated. There were 36 women
at all stages of pregnancy and it went on for a
night or a bit longer. Maybe a bit longer... That's
how we dealt with the problem. It was the most
horrific day of my life. I wish I could erase it. Later that evening soldiers
went to all the houses and told the people
to prepare to leave. We never thought
we'd be leaving forever. They told us: It will last four days. They told us to take
only casual clothes, like going on a picnic
or camping in a tent. We thought we were leaving because they said there were things
they had to do, cleanse the town, so everyone had to leave, that we'd be gone for four
days and then come back. So we took nothing with us. People didn't know
where they were going, what was happening, or why. They didn't take any
clothes or possessions. I heard them crying, screaming. Imagine leaving all
your possessions behind. You drop everything and
they take you somewhere, you have no idea where. You don't know where
they're taking you, you don't know
what's going to happen. That was the first stage. The second stage was worse. That was the worst thing
that had ever happened to me. I had a crisis. My life was torn in two. This is my house. I haven't been here in 33 years. My children grew up here. We spent the best
years of our lives here. When I first entered the zone
they put a mask on me, on my face, about 20 km from the station. And I wore that mask all day. That was on the first day. On the second day I didn't wear
a mask when I entered the zone, only when I went up on the roof. On the third day I only wore it
when I was actually on the roof, and sometimes, on the roof,
I'd take it off so I could smoke. I'll explain why. The enemy is invisible, it has no flavor, smell or form, so people weren't afraid. We didn't realize at the time
what it could eventually cause. Later I saw the results when people
I had worked with started dying, but we weren't afraid. I heard about two generals that met who were in charge of the
platoons working near the reactor. In the Orange Forest, you
know what the Orange Forest is? One was walking toward
the forest, the other, toward the reactor,
and they started talking. There was a puddle by the path. One of them stepped into the puddle. They always carried radiometers. He tested the foot and the
radiometer showed 200 roentgen. The puddle measured 200 roentgen.
And they sent him straight home. He'd only stood
there for 10 minutes. One foot in a puddle was all it took. The radiation had struck many people, and by then, it was felt in other
countries too. In Finland, in Poland, in Italy. Gorbachev gave a
speech on May 14th, and on May 15th there
was a government meeting where it was decided to
charge our bureau with the task of building a protective structure
over the reactor that exploded. The people nicknamed the
structure "The Sarcophagus". Throughout that period, before
they finished the sarcophagus, the protective structure, the reactor gave off a massive
amount of nuclear emissions which covered an
area where not millions, but tens of millions lived. Natural functions like
the wind carried not just the nuclear fallout
from the explosion but also the
contaminated dirt and sand. It was a huge catastrophe. In order to reduce the nuclear fallout it was decided to stop trying
to extinguish it with water. You understand why? Instead it was decided to
cover the reactor with sand. For this they put together a special brigade of
military helicopter pilots who dropped sacks of sand
and lead around the reactor to reduce the nuclear fallout. For the neutralization
process robots were used which were brought
from Japan and Germany. When they brought them,
apparently they didn't tell the engineers about the radiation
levels on the roof. When they activated
the robots on the roof they stopped working. One robot fell off the
roof because it lost control. And that was just the robots! We were living human beings who had worked and
absorbed all that radiation - for short periods of time, granted - but they called us bio-robots. In places where the
robots couldn't do the job the bio-robots did
it, people had to do it. There was no time to
find another solution. They made every effort
not to endanger human lives but nothing else could be done. There was no other solution. The robots simply
didn't work, you see? And we were very frightened. The operation of
pumping out the water and removing the nuclear
waste around the station had to be done quickly. It had to be raked out with a shovel, by hand. When we came out
on the roof they'd say: There's a graphite rod,
it has to be removed. It was impossible to measure the radiation levels
of the graphite rods, they were far beyond what
our instruments could measure. Although we worked in short shifts, we had to work in difficult
conditions and near the reactor. Our distance from
the reactor determined how much radiation we
absorbed so we used monitors and at the end of the day
we saw that they'd absorbed an almost lethal amount of radiation. Yeah, you’d have to call that lethal. We sent 800 men
to the roof every day. They put on lead aprons
and went straight onto the roof where they used
shovels to rake the waste and dump it into the reactor below. The second their time was up
they were ordered off of the roof. Then they'd come down
and go change clothes while the next 20 men went up. And this process was repeated nonstop. We were instructed that the men could
take a maximum dose of 10 roentgen. This amount of radiation
determined how long the soldiers were allowed to stay on the roof. We continued working as we
saw fit and did as much as we could without absorbing the
maximum amount of radiation. There was a young man, a firefighter,
I don't remember his last name. He was a young man and he was
diagnosed with level 3 radiation. His face was badly burned, just his face, but since he had a
high dose of radiation he had other symptoms too. He looked at me, his
face was covered in burns, and those two dark blue
eyes looked at me pleadingly: Please, help me, somehow! I remember what I told him: Everything will be alright. Let's hope for the best. And he replied: Can you tell my mother that? His two eyes were like an abyss but at the same time
there was a ray of hope. That was rough...I didn't
tell his mother anything. I knew he wouldn't survive. The accident affected all of Ukraine, all the systems in Russia, and the USSR, and other countries too, so in my opinion, the people who contained the
damage actually saved the whole world. And all the people who
blocked off the burning reactor with their own bodies, those who built the sarcophagus, did it at the expense of their health. You have to understand, they
treated us as living materials. Who thought it would cost
us, the liquidators, our lives? We were the living
materials supplied by the induction centers and the army. At Chernobyl there
were three special units and representatives of every
military region in the USSR. They all had no choice
but to work to contain the radiation coming
from the reactor. A lot of people. -How many? I won't say. Building the sarcophagus alone involved over half a
million people, 600,000. There were 12 districts,
50,000 per district. They couldn't make them
work 24/7 or on 8-hour shifts. They worked as much
as the radiation allowed. Some went up for three minutes,
they raked, dumped it and left. And that was that. Or they worked below for two hours when they had to
prepare equipment. People couldn't be kept in
the area for over two hours. We were responsible for them. The people who went through... who went through Chernobyl.... they knew they had to carry out
a national, governmental mission that had been placed before them and they believed it was their duty. If not me, then who? Someone had to do it. It had to be done. How can anyone regret it? There was no time to
think, let alone regret it. We had to work, to get the job done. If a liquidator had a child today, they would be automatically
designated a disaster victim, their child. The number of children in Ukraine that would be designated as
disaster victims is in the millions. These aren't only those
who were born afterwards But also those who were born then, at the time of the accident, in
areas affected by the radiation. I had't been back to Pripyat since. I didn't want to go back. I was afraid to go. It was all very traumatic for me. Is this the town square? Where's the Culture Hall? Is that it? Where's the music school? I'd like to see the music
school, I studied there. It isn't far, we can walk.
It's just 100 meters from here. Is there still radiation here? Yes, but it's low, about one
unit. About 1 micro Sievert. And what's the normal level? In Ukraine it's 0.3. But it's okay, it isn't
considered critical. This is all that's left
of the concert hall. This is the concert hall? Yes. We used to come here often... My sister took violin lessons here
and she also performed in concerts. I took painting courses,
so I sat in the audience when she performed on
stage, she played violin... I'm speechless. I don't know... It's a painful memory. No one could have been
protected from all of it It's part of our lives
and we can't escape it. These people did a heroic deed. Were they rewarded for it? I think they were simply forgotten. Because no one needs them now. I'm so sorry --- when I delve into memories of the past and I recall the people who gave their lives and
remained anonymous - nobody knows them, that's the truth. No one's heard of them. And they did a heroic deed by saving the lives of millions.
