Olena Maruzhenko remembers her mother sobbing when Soviet police told them to evacuate their home in the village of Korogod, just 12km from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It was 26 April 1986, and a reactor had exploded, sending radioactive material into the night sky. Local authorities told them they would only need to leave for three days. They had no idea it was the worst nuclear disaster in history.
“We believed we would definitely return,” Olena recalls. She and her mother were among 350,000 people evacuated from the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Hundreds of buses ferried workers from Pripyat, the industrial city built for plant workers. The explosion occurred at 1.23am during a botched test, releasing a massive cloud of radiation across Europe.
In the 40 years since, thousands have suffered devastating health consequences, including thyroid cancer. Vast areas of land were contaminated, turning lush forests reddish-brown and polluting soil for decades. The official Soviet death toll in 1987 was 31, but the true toll from lasting health effects is far higher.
Natalia Dykun, another resident of Korogod, lost her husband to cancer. “We became hostages of the Chernobyl disaster,” she says. “In almost every house near us, someone began to get sick, and later almost every family lost a relative to cancer.” She recalls the silence from Soviet authorities causing “great harm”, leaving residents “completely unprotected”.
Most residents only understood the scale of the disaster when they saw new towns being built. Olga Mikhalova was 15 when she learned she would never return home. “The accident and evacuation changed us forever. Family ties were broken. We would not wish this on anyone.” Slavutych, a planned city on the Dnieper River, now houses around 20,000 evacuees from Pripyat.
