Till the End of the World

I still don't know how far I can take this project; maybe I am already close to an end. Maybe there is no more historical research to be made, but time to turn to the pure scientifical and environmental questions, or maybe it's just time to quit; gather what I have, start writing that book and occasionally visit the zone for as long as that will be possible. Still there is of course work to be done but I don't know for how long that will last.

I am in Moscow, the capital of Russia and once the capital of all the USSR. Here were held secret meetings in Kremlin about the disaster in northern Ukraine 26 years ago; from here spread the news of a minor accident in the fourth reactor and that the situation was under control, but at the same time almost 30 men were fighting a futile fight against death at the Hospital no. 6.

Hospital no. 6, present time.

Only a little information is to be found about this hospital but once I had found the essential clues, the hospital itself wasn't at all difficult to find. I travel on the Taganskogo-Krasnoprenenskaya metro line to the station Shutinskaya. Having spun off from the question about the seven known nuclear reactors operating in Moscow, it has also come to my knowledge that there is yet another working reactor in the neighborhood. This one is a research reactor belonging to the FMBT institute (Federalniy Meditsinsky Biofizicheskiy Tsentr), which is located in the northeastern part Shutin, nearby a hospital. -A hospital that of course is the Hospital no. 6.

I am hoping to recognize the place as seen as documentaries but trees and bushes hide much of the structure and therefore it's impossible. Yet to this day this is an operating hospital; the re-built Stalin era building reaches high and I would like to take a look inside and find out more, but it's Saturday and no one there that I can talk to.

They were there. When it was realized that there was nothing to be done at the Pripyat hospital, they were flown here by helicopter. The firefighters.

A part of the Chernobyl memorial and
graves at the Mitino graveyard in the
outskirts of Moscow.

"Where are they now?" asks my companion silently.

"I don't know." For some reason I find it difficult to hold back the tears.

"Certainly not in hell." he replies himself.

It's the 2:nd of September and we stand by the Chernobyl memorial at the Mitino graveyard just outside the border of the Moscow region. The autumn has arrived early and rain falls cold from grey skies. They're almost all here, it seems, and a strange feeling starts spreading within me as I walk among the still stone faces that mark the graves of 28 diseased, not only firefighters. There is Boris Baranov, one of the two divers who neutralized the risk of another hydrogen explosion in the fourth reactor. Leonid Toptunov, junior engineer at the NPP at the night of the accident, has fresh flowers on his grave, and so has his superior Aleksandr Akimov. The two who for a long time were blamed for causing the disaster lay almost side by side. Then the firefighters. Titenok, Ignatenko, Tishura and others. Kibenok - hero of Ukraine and finally Lt. Vladimir Pravik. His place is covered by plastic flowers. Tasteless may seem, but they last longer and the bright colours light up the grey. The purple-white flowers that I left at the feet of the memorial sculpture will unfortunately soon fade. The feeling I sense is that I already knew all these people and that I in a morbid sense have finally met them. Maybe it's because of this or maybe because of the tragedy itself, but regardless of which, I am crying. 

We leave in silence and my last thought before running to the marshrutka is whether they're really there. The bodies. Are they really there or is the place just a symbol? Perhaps this is not even important in any other aspect than the pure greed of knowledge, because wherever they are, they are -as my friend said- certainly not in hell. 

Appendix:

It's been almost exactly six months since it came to my knowledge what happened to the last firefighter helmet. As you may all remember, this helmet came to have a story of its very own and people from three different countries were engaged in finding out what happened to it after our find in Pripyat in May 2011. That this last helmet finally was completely lost without trace is no news, but that goes only for parts of the helmet. The highly radioactive inlets were found thrown in a bucket in -if I remember it all correctly- the Pripyat hospital and now someone has a new souvenir, probably without the slightest thought of the real price of this trophy. 

Thanks to jsbid for the information and photos.

The Monologue of A Woman Whose Man Was Killed In the Nuclear Battle

Lyudmila Ignatenko on her wedding day.

Vasily Ignatenko was in Vladimir Pravik's group of firefighters who received the first alarm from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant 7 minutes after the second explosion in the 4th reactor. Along with Pravik and others, he was first brought to the Pripyat hospital and then to Hospital no. 6 in Moscow, where he'd soon be accompanied by his wife Lyudmila who would stay with him till he died on the 13th of May, four days after Pravik and Nikolai Kibenok.

Ignatenko's death was hard on his wife Lyudmila who at the time was also carrying their unborn child - Natasha. How could they let in a pregnant woman to the Hospital no. 6? Lyudmila lied and said that she and her husband already had two children and the nurse had replied "Then you don't need more" and granted her permission to see her husband. 

Vasily Ignatenko was highly irradiated and apart from disobeying the orders of not to kiss, hug or touch her husband, she also spent a considerable amount of time by his side. Hadn't she been pregnant, she would most likely have died, but the child absorbed most of the radiation and thus saved Lyudmila's life. The child, Natasha, however only lived for five days after being born.

Vasily Ignatenko died 25 years old.

The memories have never left Lyudmila Ignatenko and over the years she's given a number of interviews concerning her recallections of her husband and his battle against the radiation that slowly consumed his body "Every day it was like meeting a new person." she wrote in her memoirs entitled "Монолога жены пожарного, погибшего при тушении АЭС" [Monologue of the wife of a firefighter who was killed in the NPP battle] referring not to his state of mind but the decay of his body. I came across these memoirs a few months ago, but never read it fully as I was mainly looking for sources telling about the symptoms of acute radiation syndrome affecting the Chernobyl firefighters. 

As a matter of fact I had almost forgotten about Lyudmila Ignatenko when I, just a week ago, encountered the fact that the  Swedish film maker Gunnar Berghdal did not only make a movie about her life, but also asked her to tell the story as told in her memoirs. Lyudmila Ignatenko has told the same story many times before and this time she did it because a publisher needed "something fast about Chernobyl" for the 25th anniversary of the disaster. The result was the book "Ljudmila från Tjernobyl" [Lyudmila from Chernobyl] and I was very happy to come across it. Lyudmila tells her story without meddling journalists. 

For Russian readers, it shouldn't be a problem for you to find Монолога жены пожарного, погибшего при тушении АЭС, and Swedes, you may read Ljudmila från Tjernobyl [by Ordfront förlag] but what's available for the English speaking? As far as I know, her full story hasn't been published in English yet, but essential parts of it can be found in this interview

Lyudmila Ignatenko now lives in Kiev, in an area where mainly Pripyat evacuees reside.  She is 48 years old and far from healthy. Once being a pastry baker to profession, she is now a disability pensioner and just like the former liquidators of Chernobyl, she doesn't receive enough compensation to make a proper living. Thus she tries to supplement her poor income by selling bakery. This has gotten her into trouble with  the police several times as she has no permission to run a business.

After the miscarriage of Natasha, Lyudmila managed to concieve a son - Anatoly. He is now grown and helping to support his mother. 

"I am sure that he will reach somewhere in life. He has a lot of hopes and dreams."

/Lyudmila Ignatenko about her son Anatoly

The death of Vladimir Pravik

Vladimir Pravik.

Lieutenant Vladimir Pavlovich Pravik, born on the 13th of June in 1962, doesn't seem to leave my thoughts. Of all the people who died when trying to save the world from what might have become its perhaps largest disaster ever, the memory of firefighters' captain Pravik, or rather the impression of someone I never met, stays with me. 

This morning, whilst trying to wake up, drinking coffee and working on something completely different, I wanted to try to find something about Pravik that I didn't know. I found more than I thought I ever would.

On April 25th, Vladimir Pravik soon to turn 24 years old,  went to his work at the ChNPP fire station, where the hours were spent with the normal routines of theoretical and practical firefighting education and when the duties of daytime were over, the men played volleyball, watched TV, rested and relaxed. 

At 1:30 am, on the Saturday of the 26th of April, the alarm sounded; something had happened at the nuclear power plant and Pravik and his men headed to fulfill their duty. 

In the west, we haven't seen reports of such as what I found, but there are official memoirs of a physician at the time working at the Moscow hospital no. 6 (where the first victims were brought), whose name for me is still unknown, and he told about Vladimir Pravik and his comrades:

"Through the microscope, it was impossible to get a proper view of their heart tissue. The cells' nuclei had formed clusters and there were fragments of muscular tissue. This was a direct effect from ionizing radiation rather than a consequense of secondary biological changes. To save these patients is impossible."

Pravik and his collegues were given morphine and other drugs to ease their pain and they went through bone marrow transplantation, but it was all futile. At this time, Vladimir Pravik was showing severe symptoms of  acute radiation syndrome, suffering from difficult gastrointestal problems; pneumonia and leukopenia. He had lost his hair and his skin flaked and after some time, his tongue was so swollen, and his salivary glands had ceased to function, so he could no longer speak.

"Vladimir Pravik lies naked on an iclined bed, under the metal frame of lamps. The entire surface of his body is burnt by radiation and fire and it's hard to tell what is caused by the fire and what is caused by radiation. It all comes together. There are enourmous internal and external swellings: Swollen lips, mouth, tongue, esophagus... 

This is nuclear pain - atrocious, unbearable and ruthless, bringing shock and unconsciousness. The whole body of this firefighting hero is overflowed by nuclear pain. Then shot through with morphine and other drugs to ease the pain. Pravik and his comrades have gone through intravenous bone marrov transplantation, and we've injected liver extract to try to stimulate haematopoiesis. But... Death is not retreating.  

Vladimir Pravik stoically endured the pain. This Slavic hero would have survived and death would have lost, if hadn't his skin been killed in its full depth...
And it seems as if in this state, his thoughts were not with worldy pleasures or in grief but with his comrades. While he still could speak, Vladimir Pravik tried to learn from nurses and doctors about the state of his friends. How were they? They were alive, right? He wanted them to fight, and with his courage, to help them.  

The radiation came to affect his salivary glands; his mouth went dry like a desert and thus Pravik was unable to speak any more. He could only stare with those expressive eyes, blinking bare eyelids, refusing to submit to death. Then his internal resistance forces began to weaken and gradually dry up. Pravik began to die. The loss of flesh from his eyes. He began to melt. Dry. Fade. This mummified skin and irradiated tissue. For each hour, for each day, this human being ceased - ceased, ceased, ceased! Damn this nuclear age! It's not even possible to die in a human way. Deceased - blackened, withered mummy..." 

Vladimir Pavlovich Pravik died just a few days before his 24th birthday. His remains rest in a sealed zinc coffin in the Mitinskoe cemetary in Moscow. He posthoumously received the medals of the Order of Lenin and hero of the Soviet Union and today his name is mentioned in and featured on several memorials. Vladimir Pravik prefered to live

1986: Descending

Under the 4th reactor, in the so called bubbler pool (a reservoir for the emergency cooling pumps), and in the basement underneath it, a large amount of water had accumulated; according to some sources, it was a matter of  approximately  20 000 metric tons of water, but as I cannot verify these sources I ask you not to pay too much attention to this number.

The water had assembled in the concrete room under the 4th reactor as a result of assumedly ruptured water pipes and definitely the first attempts to put out the fire in the reactor core, and the active fuel had already reached partly through the concrete floor when it came to attention that if it would reach the water, there would be a great risk of a thermal explosion that would make all of the nothern Ukraine and most of Belarus uninhabitable for a long time to come. Naturally then, the water would have to be removed.

A common mistake is obviously to assume that firefighters performed this drainage but perhaps that common mistake is understandable, as the facts and information concerning this matter are quite vague. In any case, the water had to be drained manually, by opening the floodgates at the bottom of the room. This meant that divers had to descend into the now highly radioactive water. The official story tells that three men volunteered, but what's for certain is that their names were Aleksey Ananenko, Valery Bespalov and Boris Baranov.

Ananenko was an engineer who had helped in the design of the floodgates, why he had to lead the way. Bespalov was a colleague, also employed at the ChNPP and Baranov, who never descended, was a soldier of the Red Army, whose function was to light their underwater way. However, Baranov's lamp failed and thus Ananenko and Bespalov were forced to find their way by feeling and following a main pipe.

To the lost workers of Chernobyl

Eventually they found the floodgates and managed to release the water and afterwards, the basement underneath could be drained by using fire brigade pumps.

The heroes of Chernobyl are many and the majority of them will never get a mentioning, but nonetheless they all helped to save the world.

About radiation, part 1: Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS)

It's all around us, its everywhere - just like Kraftwerk points out in their song Radioaktivity: 

"Radioactivity - it's in the air for you and me"

 ...and this is true. Every day we're exposed to radiation. Living on Earth, the magnetic field of the planet protects us from dangerous gamma radiation from the space that surrounds us all, but even down here, we're still exposed to radiation from various sources: Radiation also comes from the bedrock, our TV sets, computers and a lot of other utilities and devices we have invented and even from ourselves. Like all living creatures on this planet, we radiate.

However, the gathering term of "radiation" is generally mistaken for ionizing radiation, which is a term for the kind of radiation that has the characteristics of knocking electrons from their atoms, which turns the atoms into ions. Ionizing radiation, to put it shortly, may be electromagnetic radiation (gamma, roentgen and ultraviolet radiation) or particle radiation which is constituted by atoms or parts of atoms moving in a "flow". Examples of this is alpha, beta and neutron radiation. 

Chernobyl liquidator in 1986. Photo from Belarus.com

But what happens when the human body is exposed to ionizing radiation? 

As the energy of the [ionzing] radiation reaches the body, electrically charged elements are formed, and these are the very ions. They trigger the culturing of new, strange elements in the tissue which may cause irreparable damage to the cells. The constitution of hydrogen peroxide easily adapts to the molecules of the human body and  is known to alter their chemical structures.

Still to this day, we know more of acute radioation syndrome (ARS) than we may be able to determine happens to the human body if exposed to relatively small increased levels of ionizing radiation during a longer time span. It's recorded that such a thing increases the risk of developing cancer, but there are still many questions that need to be answered within that area, as it's also been proven that people living on sites where the bedrock emit higher levels of radiation, are generally healthier than their equivalents in places where the bedrock is less radioactive, so it goes without saying that we still have a lot to learn about radiation.




Acute Radiation Syndrome

Radiation, nowadays, is measured accoring to the Sievert (Sv) units, but there's another unit for measuring how much ionizing radiation the human body has absorbed, and this is measured in so called Grays (Gy). 1 Gy is equivalent to 1 Sv The threshold of ARS is defined between 0,5 - 1,0 Gy - having exceeded this limit, the well known symptoms of nausea, vertigo and vomiting occur.  If being exposed to what is regarded as a mild dose (1-2 Gy) you may expect symptoms of nausea and vomiting withing six hours, and the later effects, such as weakness and fatique,  will occur approximately three to five weeks later. 

 If having absorbed more than 6 Gy, most symptoms, nausea, headache, vomiting, fever and diarrhea will occur within a matter of hours, and then follows the so called latent period. Also at mild exposure, there is a latent period followed by mild leukopenia (Leukopenia means a decrease of white blood cells in the human body, which increases the risk of infections.) fatique and weakness, but the mortality is low: Regardless if being treated or not, the mortality is lower than 5% and those who die from mild absorption are especially old individuals, or individuals of already poor health, but at absorption over 6 Gy, death is almost certain if the individiual is not treated and even if treated, the mortality is between 50-100%. 

Workers on the roof or reactor block 4, 1986. Photo: guardian.co.uk

The higher the absorption, the shorter is the latent period and absorbing over 8 Gy, the latent period will be absent and death follows within 2-14 days. 


Even though no one seem to be able to determine or tell for sure, about the levels of radiation that some of the Chernobyl liquidators were exposed to, we can almost be sure of that they absorbed far over 8 Gy (some firefighters were estimated to having been exposed to approximately 750 Roentgen per hour, but the true numbers should exceed this. 750 R = 7.5 Sv = 7.5 Gy), why they died very shortly after the exposure, over a short time span having suffered multiple severe ARS symptoms.


ARS symptoms at absorption over 8 Gy are: Nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, intense headache, high fever, electrolyte disturbance, shock and disturbance of the central nervous system.

The ghosts of the firefighters

I'll throw you right into another mystery of the Zone. In my Chernobyl report, I mentioned having found a firefighter's helmet at the ferry port, close to the Pripyat kafé: 

"Pripyat kafe is close to the ferry port. No boats are around, but a firefighter's helmet has been placed on a chair there. Maybe this is the one taken from the hospital's basement? No, the readings are not high enough, or perhaps the radioactivity has just rubbed off on the idiot who brought it there."

The readings were obviously irrelevant, I've come to understand, and the idiocy was less... 
In the same report I mention searching the Pripyat hospital:

"Having seen images of the above mentioned room before, I don't realize I've found it but then it becomes clear to me, that a lot of clothes, boots, and a partiular helmet have been removed. I wonder who could be stupid enough to do something like that - risking contamination for old, wet, radioactive clothes. There's no way this could have been done by any liquidator. It's happened too recently. Whomever is responsible, he's likely to pay a high price."

Now even you who did not read that report before, have a chance to catch up, and thus I can proceed.

The question was still "What happened to the firefighters' items?"; at the same time I started to receive questions  about where I found that helmet, and eventually it all added up, as I received new information. 

Wrong angle for the scavengers!

The helmets were taken away to be protected from scavengers wanting trophies and souvenirs, but the procedure to decontaminate and transport these items to a safe and official environment, would be too difficult, and thus the helmets were simply hidden in what was hoped to be a safer place...

Unfortunately this wasn't safe enough. The helmets were found and are now lost once again, and it was a surprise that one of these helmet was to be found, peacefully resting by the water...

Another photo of "my" helmet was displayed, when it was still in the hospital basement. Burn marks on the left side of the visor and the black spot where the visor is shut and locked indicates it's the same helmet.

I wonder if it's still there, and if so - for how much longer.

Chernobyl in popular culture - Part III

My first outspoken Chernobyl inspired artwork. It's not a mutant.

This blog isn't only related to facts and features concerning Chernobyl, but as the title reveals, it's my Chernobyl project, which has the main purpose of educating and telling people about the Zone, but also to give my own personal views on the subject in order to prepare for the exhibition in August. 

I have already given a brief introduction of myself in this post, but else to be said is that I'm also an illustrator and author of graphic novels, and as I currently run the side project of finding out about how Chernobyl  appears in popular culture, this is a good moment to sneak in some more of my own stuff.

What can I tell with images, that hasn't already been told a hundred times before in other images as well as written words? Of Chernobyl in fiction we have a lot already, so why do I keep on depicturing the elements  that I relate to this subject? Perhaps because it's still in many ways a great mystery to me - a puzzle waiting to be solved. In many ways. And until I've solved this mystery, the images will keep coming to me.

Of this image to the left, you've seen the prequel. I posted it a few days ago. This may or may not be included in my exhibition, and if it will, you will not see it like this, but rather more like the four A3 original drawings.

Once, whilst still in the Zone, and at a few occasions after that, I have been asked if I intend to make a graphic novel about Chernobyl. The answer at this point is still no, and I can't see anything changing that in a near future. However, when I was still doing research concerning my article about the first Chernobyl firefighters, I had a few more images, and things became a little more visual than usually, and thus the idea of this  image was born, based on the words of Grigoriy Khmel, one of the first 28 deceased.

It stays there. 

The March of April

I finished this painting late last night. As always, my camera unfortuantely doesn't agree to take photos of paintings, but here - This is my tribute to the firefighters and liquidators of Chernobyl.

 

Edited: I have replaced the old photo with a slightly better one.

Those who saved the world

The reactor room of block 4. From Chernobyl25

The first explosion destroyed the core of the 4th reactor, but the second explosion, being much more powerful, launched burning graphite and reactor fuel into the air. Inside the reactor, this second explosion had created a crater of burning graphite, and when the graphite blown off hit the ground, it caused about 30 other fires, and the fires were the prime emergency.

Vladimir Pavlovich Pravik

When receiving the alarm from the plant, seven minutes after the second explosion, the Chernobyl  Power Station fire crew, lead by 23 years old Lieutenant  Vladimir  Pavlovich Pravik, immediately responded and sent three fire engines to the scene of the accident. Pravik saw that this wasn't enough and sent emergency alarms to Pripyat , the town of Chernobyl and the entire Kiev region, requesting the mobilization of their fire brigades. Major Leonid Telyatnikov, commander of the second fire station in Pripyat arrived to the scene 10 minutes after the first firefighters had begun their work and now taking the main command, Telyatnikov and his men climbed up on the roof of the 3rd reactor building, which had many fires. and had started to collapse. The fact that the 3rd reactor was still operating, made it a high priority task to extinguish these fires, but Telyatnikov's crew was unsuccessful and soon replaced by the Kiev fire brigade. 4,5 hours later all fires had been extinguished, except for that inside reactor 4. 

Viktor Birkun, wearing only a cotton uniform, drove his fire engine over the roof of reactor 4, which was now lying on the ground, 15 meters away from the reactor. Most firefighters found that their gloves were clumsy and uncomfortable, so using only his bare hands, Birkun lowered the siphon of the fire engine into the nearby cooling pond to suck up water for his fire fighting comrades and in within a matter of minutes he began to feel the attack of radiation on his body. He starded vomiting every 30 seconds, became dizzy and weak and after two hours he could no longer stand up straight, having received 260 ber (biological equivalents of roentgen),  which is equivalent to 1000 years of background radiation. Some of the firefighters recieved approximately 700 roentgen in 12 hours.

It has been said that the firefighters didn't know about the risk and danger of their task, but certainly there was some awareness. Anatoly Zhakarov, a firefighter from Chernobyl did 20 years after the accident state that:

"I remember joking to the others, "There must be an incredible amount of radiation here. We'll be lucky if we're all still alive in the morning."

And it has also been said, that some of them would but lead in their underwear  to protect their private parts from radiation.

Chernobyl firefighter in hospital.

The fire inside reactor 4 could not be extinguished by the brave men who tried. Only 9 days later was it finally put out (see this post). Viktor Birkun survived and is still alive, in spite of still suffering from acute radiation sickness, but of 134 liqudators with the same diagnosis, 28 died in 1986, not long after the disaster. On the 9th of May 1986, Vladimir Pravik died. His colleagues, Nikolaj Titenok, Vladimir Tishura, Viktor Kibenok, Vasillij Ignatenko, and Nikolaj Vashchuk, were brought to the Pripyat hospital for treatment, within hours after their operation at the reactor and there they died. 

"We arrived there at 10 or 15 minutes to two in the morning… We saw graphite scattered about. Misha asked: "Is that graphite?" I kicked it away. But one of the fighters on the other truck picked it up. "It's hot," he said. The pieces of graphite were of different sizes, some big, some small, enough to pick them up…

We didn't know much about radiation. Even those who worked there had no idea. There was no water left in the trucks. Misha filled a cistern and we aimed the water at the top. Then those boys who died went up to the roof... -Vashchuk, Kolya and others, and Volodya Pravik.… They went up the ladder … and I never saw them again" /Grigoriy Khmel

Leonid Telyatnikov died from cancer in 2004, 54 years old. 

These men all gave their lifes to save the world and saying that, is no exaggeration. Honour their bravery and memory.  

Roses for the heroes, spread out at the fire station in Pripyat. Photo taken by me, on the 24th of May 2011.

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