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First off, the title is very misleading. How exactly did this 9-year-old "ex-USSR citizen" witness Chernobyl? the firefighters were never even told it was a nu

First off, the title is very misleading. How exactly did this 9-year-old "ex-USSR citizen" witness Chernobyl? the firefighters were never even told it was a nuclear reactor Huh? Were they blindfolded when they went out on the response call? There were a lot of uninformed rumors, and and I don't see any evidence that they were not OP's father's primary sources. From reading interviews with the firemen who first arrived at the scene (I believe all of them died from radiation poisoning within months of the accident), it was clear that they knew where they were going. They certainly did not expect it to be as bad as it was, but it was their actions and heroism that prevented a much larger catastrophe than what the world has witnessed. If you read Russian or are willing to suffer through automated translation, take a look at this Chernobyl expose from 1989: http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/CHERNOBYL/medvedev.txt http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/CHERNOBYL/medvedev.txt It quotes a lot of first-person accounts and adds a unique human side to dry statistics and technical discussion available elsewhere.

jitbit 16y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Fire_containment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Fire_contain... - "not even have known that the accident was anything more than a regular electrical fire: "We didn't know it was the reactor. No one had told us.""
- georgecmu 16y ago
  Why are you quoting so selectively? Your credibility was not very high to begin with. That particular quote reads "may not even have known that the accident was anything more than a regular electrical fire" Right below there are contradicting accounts quoted: "However, Anatoli Zakharov, a fireman stationed in Chernobyl since 1980, offers a different description: 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." Twenty years after the disaster, he claimed the firefighters from the Fire Station No. 2 were aware of the risks. Of course we knew! If we'd followed regulations, we would never have gone near the reactor. But it was a moral obligation—our duty. We were like kamikaze.[29]"
- VladRussian 16y ago
  again, at the beginning [while they were driving] the firefighters possibly didn't know the exact specifics. But, these were firefighters driving to a fire on a nuclear power plant in the country where high schoolers were taught to use radiation measurement devices. People knew the country they were living in, i was 14 in 1986 and i remember it very well how people read things "between the lines". Obviously, the firefighters got the right idea when they came. They still did their job though. The closest to depicting that i think is "K-19 The Widowmaker"

jitbit 16y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Fire_containment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Fire_contain... - "not even have known that the accident was anything more than a regular electrical fire: "We didn't know it was the reactor. No one had told us.""

georgecmu 16y ago
Why are you quoting so selectively? Your credibility was not very high to begin with. That particular quote reads "may not even have known that the accident was anything more than a regular electrical fire" Right below there are contradicting accounts quoted: "However, Anatoli Zakharov, a fireman stationed in Chernobyl since 1980, offers a different description: 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." Twenty years after the disaster, he claimed the firefighters from the Fire Station No. 2 were aware of the risks. Of course we knew! If we'd followed regulations, we would never have gone near the reactor. But it was a moral obligation—our duty. We were like kamikaze.[29]"
VladRussian 16y ago
again, at the beginning [while they were driving] the firefighters possibly didn't know the exact specifics. But, these were firefighters driving to a fire on a nuclear power plant in the country where high schoolers were taught to use radiation measurement devices. People knew the country they were living in, i was 14 in 1986 and i remember it very well how people read things "between the lines". Obviously, the firefighters got the right idea when they came. They still did their job though. The closest to depicting that i think is "K-19 The Widowmaker"