The Battle of Chernobyl Page #3

She lived in Pripyat with her family.

Her father worked at the plant.

My parents took me to the day care center like usual.

Everything was absolutely normal.

My father already knew there'd been an accident, but no precautions had been taken yet.

30 hours after the explosion, the first security measures are enforced.

More than 1000 buses have arrived.

At 2:
00 pm the army announces the city to be completely evacuated.

I remember the teachers at the kindergarten gave us iodine pills.

Then parents came to pick up their kids.

Everyone was running around, but they weren't panicking.

We thought we were only going to be gone for three days.

To avoid any panic the authorities concealed the seriousness of the situation.

Inhabitants are given two hours to gather their belongings and assemble in front of their buildings.

They told us to get in the buses.

I remember perfectly well having to choose which toys I was going to take.

I had a lot of dolls and wanted to bring them all, but I couldn't.

We couldn't even take any warm clothes.

People have to leave everything they own, their entire lives, behind.

They will never return...

One old man didn't want to go.

He stayed behind.

They found his body a few weeks later.

People didn't really believe what was happening.

They thought they were being lied to.

They remembered the German occupation and said that in 1941, there were bombs that fell.

But now there was nothing.

The elderly people didn't believe in an invisible enemy and there was no time to explain.

My soldiers and I were simply carrying out orders.

In three and a half hours, 43,000 people are evacuated tearfully but peacefully.

Buses carry Europe's first atomic refugees.

They have been exposed to doses of radiation that may alter the composition of their blood, and engender fatal cancers.

48 hours after the disaster, the only people left in the ghost town are the military personnel

and members of the scientific delegation head quartered at the Pripyat hotel.

As if unaware of the danger, they eat, sleep and work right on the premises.

These were upstanding people, specialists.

I couldn't believe they would do something irresponsible or suicidal.

No, it meant they'd underestimated the situation.

Our old criteria were no good anymore.

There'd been nuclear accidents before, in our country as well as in the US, but that information had been kept secret.

There'd never been an accident of this scope.

They even thought the reactor would be back in service by May or June.

Meanwhile, clouds filled with radioactive particles are being blown North by the wind.

Between 26 and 27 in April, they drift over one thousand kilometers above Russia, then over Belorussia and the Baltics.

Rate this script:3.5 / 2 votes