Over the next four years, approximately 600,000 people participated in the cleanup, known as liquidators. Among them were Anatolii Prylipko, who arrived nine days after the accident and drove a fire truck for a month; Anatolii Krutik, deployed in summer 1986 to fence off contaminated territory; Volodymyr Vechirko, sent to clear topsoil and clean buildings; and Petro Hurin, who arrived in June 1986 and operated an excavator loading dry concrete mixed with lead to build a sarcophagus around the damaged reactor.
According to The Independent - Main, Anatolii Krutik described that there were virtually no safety precautions, with workers wearing whatever they arrived in and leaving in the same clothes. Volodymyr Vechirko attributes his lifelong health problems to working at the disaster site. According to The Independent - Main, Petro Hurin described that of the 40 people from his firm who were sent to Chernobyl, only five are still alive. He also described that Soviet doctors were forbidden from diagnosing radiation sickness.
No one really thought about it. We didn’t know what it was — this invisible enemy.
Thousands more have died from radiation-related illnesses since the disaster, but the precise total death toll and long-term health effects remain debated among experts.
Not a single Chernobyl person is in good health. It’s death by a thousand cuts.
I realised that, however small my contribution might be, I was doing my bit to help tame this atomic beast.
The dust was terrible. You’d work for half an hour in a respirator, and it would end up looking (brown) like an onion.
I was brought to the hospital, and the doctors did a blood test first. They pricked all my fingers and a pale liquid came out, but no blood.