Chernobyl disaster: Difference between revisions

{{blockquote|We arrived there at 10 or 15 minutes to two in the morning&nbsp;... 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&nbsp;[...] 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—Vashchik, Kolya and others, and Volodya Pravik&nbsp;... They went up the ladder&nbsp;... and I never saw them again.<ref>{{cite news |last=Shcherbak |first=Y. |title=Chernobyl |publisher=Yunost |year=1987 |volume=6 |editor=Medvedev, G. |page=44}}</ref>}}

 

Anatoli Zakharov, a fireman stationed in Chernobyl since 1980, offered a different description in 2008: "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.{{'"}}<ref name="nuclruss"/> He also stated, "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]]."<ref name="nuclruss">{{cite news |first=Adam |last=Higginbotham |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/mar/26/nuclear.russia |title=Chernobyl 20 years on |newspaper=[[The Observer]] |date=26 March 2006 |access-date=22 March 2010 |location=London |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130830011011/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/mar/26/nuclear.russia |archive-date=30 August 2013 |url-status=live }}</ref>