Stories of heroism and cowardice

Press, 31 May 1986, Page 19

Stories of heroism and cowardice

ANDREW WILSON

reports from Moscow

on developments in the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster.

<*Like the first swallows of an interrupted summer, 65 British students have returned to the Soviet Union. They are safely tucked away at the University of Kuban in Krasnodar, 800 km to L'sookm from their previous study centres near the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

7 The decision to withdraw them ffom Kiev and Minsk, while leaving others in Moscow, has been justified by radiation readings. Thanks to wind direction and distance, Moscow turns out to have been about the safest place in Europe.

With the Chernobyl reactor cure reportedly down to less than 200 degrees Celsius and the radioactive leakage “minimal,” (fie Soviet media is seeking to assure people that most of the Chernobyl injuries were just ‘1 '

temporary and psychological.

The campaign has brought stories, previously withheld from the public, of both heroism and cowardice.

The highest award should surely go to a doctor named Tuyanov who went no less than seven times into the intensely irradiated reactor zone to bring out injured. His fate is not stated. Nor is that of others who repeatedly exposed themselves. In contrast, local party officials have found it necessary to expel a 30-year-old member who, pretending to be sick, deserted his post as head of a team decontaminating evacuation buses. And while medics and drivers were volunteering to go into the radiation zone from as far away as Leningrad, some Kiev citizens

were applying modern management techniques by hiking the rent of accommodation to refugees.

“Not everything was beautiful,” a doctor told readers of “Soviet skaya Kultura” on May 20 “but we can talk about that later.”

Nearly 2000 medical volunteers were drafted into the affected area, working in teams of four. In a makeshift laboratory set up in a hostel, doctors were taking blood samples and examining 3000 patients a day. According to a local party official in the immediate danger

zone everyone acted bravely and calmly. But “the further from the epicentre, the greater the number of the frightened and illinformed.” “There was more alarm in Kiev than there ever was in Chernobyl.” The Ukranian deputy Health Minister has denied a Moscow rumour that during the crisis “alcohol had been sold freely in Kiev, even in bakeries.” Iq Moscow itself, some timid souls have been officially accused of having refused to accept “contaminated” letters or have physical contact with

arrivals from the danger zone. But there was also crass ignorance in the zone itself. Said a doctor: “There were some who, out of daring, refused to take basic precautions. I know of at least one who paid the penalty.” The town of Chernobyl is now dead, but far from silent. Armoured vehicles, with crew radiation protection, have been rumbling through the streets with loads of concrete for the socalled “sarcophagus” encasing the rogue reactor.

Others are still strengthening the protective dyke being built to stop radioactive water from entering the nearby river Pripyat.

All workers wear green or white cotton disposable antiradiation garments, obliterating

badges of rank and so promoting what “Izvestia” just stops short of calling the spirit of Stalingrad. According to officials a programme has now been decided for emergency work up to June 15. It includes the decontamination of buildings, the burying of radioactive debris in a huge pit, and (an unconsicous irony) the taking of a “concrete decision” about re-starting Chernobyl’s three undamaged reactors. Scientists have conducted an experiment in which stretches of contaminated soil have been ploughed and then sown with a variety of chemicals. No new figures have been issued for casualties from the accident. Official total is still 15 dead, 299 taken to hospital. Nor are officials offering any estimates as the possible number of

long-term cancer victims as a result of exposure and fall-out. The. Ukrainian deputy Health Minister, Oleg Schepin, has admitted that there was "simply not enough experience” for the task. “We lack sufficient radiology specialists. It’s a gap in our health service training.” Those who had had only “light doses” would need to be kept under careful observation, he added.

The bone-marrow transplant, specialist from the United States, Robert Gale, has been back in

Moscow to monitor the progress of radiation victims who received transplants under his direction in the first week of the emergency.

Where matching bone-marrow was available from close family members, a number of operations appear to have been successful. In other cases, there was no hope, because the victims’ marrow was already dead and could not be matched with stocks in the United States “world marrow bank.” — Copright London Observer Service.