UKRAINE: Staff of Ukraine's Chernobyl plant mourn their lost colleagues and recall the terrifying accident twenty years ago .

Record ID: 215888

  • Title: UKRAINE: Staff of Ukraine's Chernobyl plant mourn their lost colleagues and recall the terrifying accident twenty years ago .
  • Date: 23rd April 2006
  • Summary: PEOPLE AT THE CEMETERY
  • Embargoed: 8th May 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Ukraine
  • Country: Ukraine
  • Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes
  • Reuters ID: LVA8BZF8LWC0XPOPX2VBMSBH7EMS
  • Story Text: At a cemetery in central Kiev, people gather to remember the horrors of 20 years ago.
    These are some of the staff of Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power station who were on duty when the plant's fourth reactor exploded.
    They are among the lucky ones.
    Dressed in their best suits and sporting rows of medals, dozens of engineers and firefighters pay heartfelt tributes to their fallen colleagues.
    "You lost your health as you fought against such a serious accident; now we hope that the earth will hold you softly, good-bye for ever," said Oleksander Cheryanov, at the graveside of his colleague, Marat Tashimov.
    "Our pain of loss has brought us together and made us stronger; it has helped us to cope with and in some cases overcome the circumstances we find ourselves in, even in such difficult circumstances. There were 250 staff who received excessive radiation on April 26 (1986), but only 172 are now alive, living in Ukraine," said Oleksander Zelentsov, head of a group which brings together those who were at work at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986.
    After a memorial service in a church, members of the "Ray 5/2 Union", named after the two shifts of the day, laid flowers and lit candles at the graveside of dozens who paid with their lives to contain the world's worst civil nuclear disaster.
    "(My) Life has completely split into two parts, the part before the accident, and the part after the accident. After the accident, life is about survival and before it (the accident) everything was wonderful, just great," said former Chernobyl station engineer Oleksander Nikhaev. He worked the entire night after the blast. Then he was hospitalised in Moscow on April 27, a day after the accident and stayed in hospital for the next two years, undergoing 19 operations.
    Twenty years after the Chernobyl accident, the horrors continue to haunt them.
    "The accident robbed of a lot - a lot has changed in our lives. I, for example, cannot carry on working as a specialist. After the accident I was trying to go to the (Chernobyl) zone and do my duties, but I couldn't do it for very long, I only lasted six months, and said that I could not do it any more. My psychological and physical state wouldn't let me carry on with the work,"said Oleksander Ogulov, a former Chernobyl station engineer.
    A series of explosions at 1.26 a.m. destroyed reactor No. 4 station and several hundred staff and firefighters were thrown into the task of tackling a blaze that burned for 10 days, sending a plume of radiation around the world.
    Flames soared into the sky, sparks cascaded down from cables hanging from shattered pumps, dirty water gushed in all directions and the reactor's wreckage was red hot.
    Worst of all was a blue-white light shooting skyward -- a shaft of ionising radiation from the exposed reactor core.
    Some of the Chernobyl staff remember in vivid detail the terrifying images of a radiation inferno out of control.
    "We heard a loud noise, about 150 metres from the 4th reactor. Then in a few seconds later after the loud noise, there was a wave, the floor was moving in a wave, 30 cm high, like in an earthquake," said Mykola Bondarenko, an engineer on duty at the Chernobyl station.
    "From the right hand side we could see the first explosion in the 4th reactor. Then moments later there was a second explosion, it was a white flash, lasting for about 6 seconds. But we carried on working until the morning," he added.
    Staff toiled without protective clothing and, more often than not, with no equipment to measure the radiation. Their families were asleep a mere 3 km (two miles) away in Pripyat, a town specially built along with the plant.
    "People (the station staff) didn't stop to think what had happened, if they had, they would have run away; especially being aware that there is a high risk (of radiation). So all the staff who could work, just carried on working," said Evhen Lushkevich, another staff member at the Chernobyl power station.
    Absorption of huge radiation doses turned out to be fatal for some. Workers from that shift were ferried to hospitals in Kiev or in Moscow. Many remained for long periods. Some never made it back home.
    The Ray 5/2 Union had 250 members when it was founded. Only 172 are left. END
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