The liquidator word appeared as a colloquialism. However, soon it acquired content,
being the exact word engraved in Soviet medals and
badges that were given to people involved in the liquidation of
the disaster. It must be said that it was a diverse workforce. This post will
abound in the scope to be given to the term ‘liquidador’ from the scrutiny -not
exhaustive- of the roles who participated in the infernal liquidation of
Chernobyl and its collateral effects.
Nuclear Emergency…
working all together
The management of
the Chernobyl nuclear emergency involved many jobs with
different levels of responsibility. The first to confront the reality without a
clear awareness of the seriousness and depth of the accident were the technicians working in the reactors, led by Anatoly Dyatlov.
When they got to
knowledge that the catastrophe was imminent and unstoppable, the plant staff
was seconded by firefighters and the brigades of civil defense of
the Soviet Armed Forces, who worked intensively in removing contaminating
materials and deactivation of the reactor itself.
Also offered a helping
hand the internal brigades and police in charge of
security, access control and evacuation of the civilian people from the
population centers closest to the plant (since then Prypiat is a ghost town).
Likewise, the
Soviet air force and civil aviation took part in the
assistance running critical flight operations with helicopters, transportation
and monitoring of radioactive contamination.
The emergence also
attracted many civilians with scientific training,
engineers and industrial and construction workers. Carriers also
did their work by providing supplies and staff mobility, in addition to make it
possible the evacuation of Prypiat in
record time, which at the time of the accident, had a population of around
50,000.
A team of coal
miners built a huge barrier to protect the aquifer
beneath the damaged reactor from contamination.
Finally, were
involved in the Chernobyl nuclear chaos the professionals of the mass
media, who provided information on the field, or those photographers who took snapshots of that gruesome
operations theater and of the liquidators themselves while were performing
their lethal operations.
Carcinogenicity rate of Liquidators was calculated as four times higher than that of
the rest of population. The drip of deaths, ceaseless.
Collateral damage
and casualties
In the houses of
the exclusion area the health personnel –civilians
and military- played their role. They were helped by legions of female-cleaners whose mission was to
eliminate food left in the houses evacuated to prevent an epidemic outbreak of
unseen proportions. One detail not minor was the need for a few squadrons concentrating in the extermination of all domestic
animals, left behind in abandoned homes on the run for a
sinister exodus.
“Never again”
The lesson of the
catastrophe impels the Western society to proclaim a ‘Never again’, thanking the liquidators their
self-denying sacrifice. There were thousands of anonymous
and heroic workers, and a few who escaped to anonymity. Among
these, the deputy Volodymyr Pravik, head of a
fire brigade, has been one of the most popular and also an immediate victim of
the disaster.
Better luck had Anatoly Stepanovich Dyatlov, nuclear technician who
supervised the reactor 4 test the fateful day of the accident. He was accused
of “criminal bad management of potentially explosive industry” and was
sentenced to 10 years in prison, of which he served just 5. He wrote the book “Chernobyl. How it happened” in which he
proclaims that deficiencies in plant design, maintenance
conditions, along with obsolete technology, were the main causes of the
accident instead of staff’s human errors. Dyatlov
received a radiation dose of 550 rem (5.5 sievert). He died of heart failure in
1995.
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