The Liquidators

The memorial to Chernobyl night. For the dead and the unborn...written in stone to the living.

These fire engines never returned to their garages, the firemen they carried never returned to their homes. They were the first on the scene and thought it was just an ordinary fire. They did not know what they were really dealing with, nor were they properly prepared to fight this battle.

Liquidators on their way to Chernobyl.

The "Liquidators" were recruited or forced to assist in the cleanup, or the liquidation of, the consequences of the accident. As a totalitarian government, the Soviet Union provided many young soldiers to assist with the cleanup of the Chernobyl accident, but did not provide many of them with adequate protective clothing...or with any explanation of the dangers involved. Over 650,000 liquidators were involved in the Chernobyl disaster cleanup during that first year. This group included those who built the containment building called the "SARCOPHAGUS" over destroyed Reactor No. 4.

Soldiers on the roof of Reactor No. 3 (there are a total of four reactors located at the Chernobyl plant) pick up deadly pieces of radioactive graphite from the explosion and toss them down into the cauldron of the demolished reactor core. First, they tried to use robots, but technics have been disabled either by high radiation or have been entangled in debris. They then sent thousands of soldiers...biorobots...to do the work machinery couldn't.

Work on the roof was the shortest job of all, and lasted only two minutes. Many soldiers were offered a choice of how to fulfill the tour of duty requirements necessary to retire from the Army. One choice was to spend two years in a hellish rain of bullets, rockets and bombs in Afghanistan, the other to spend two minutes in a tranquil, silent, and invisible rain of gamma rays on the roof of Unit No. 3.

Ruins of Reactor No. 4