Here's a link to some fairly recent pictures of the abandoned city around Chernobyl. You may have already viewed these, maybe not. The pictures of the hastily evacuated schools are quite sad.
There are some comments at the end of the post that are profane and unnecessary so ignore those.
May Day was only a few days away, so the celebratory holiday rides were already there, there was food in the grocery stores, clothes in the clothing shops.
They are still there.
Thanks again. Great pics, great pic links at bottom, idiotic comments from mental children.
Background: Chernobyl is a “goblast” or “county” name. It is also the name of the main “county seat” city in the area. Not too many people lived in Chernobyl city. Some still rotate in to work in admin jobs, fire department, etc. The large district hospital was there. It was operational, sort of, in 96.
If the first picture is of the sign I think it is, I used used the other side of it in a standup. The spoken line was “The sign says “Welcome to Chernobyl.” 20 years after the accident, it is both a welcome and a warning.”
The abandoned villages are in the 30 km radius “Zone of Estrangement.” A few hundred people, mostly senior citizens, have sneaked back into their homes there.
The two pictures of the gray statue are very interesting. It is at the entrance to the Chernobyl City fire station. It was being completed when we were there first time in ‘96. It was built by firemen from Chernobyl City station, not professional sculptors. Materiel was sort of a gunite concrete over wooden frame. That's all they had. Part of design was to show absence of any effective anti-radiation gear or clothing. 51 D 16’ 50.33” N 30 D 12’ 30.20” N Google Earth. It depicts the six firefighters who died fighting the fire at the plant that night.
It was at this fire station that we met the one other fire fighter who was at the plant in ‘86. He was 38 when we met him. He looked 80. He got 340 rads in one night. Safety standards were supposedly a maximum of 25 rads in lifetime, max 1 or 2 in any one year.
The “airfield” (emphasis on “field”) where all firefighting helicopters and ours took off from is just NW at 51 17 11.35 N / 30 12 00.00 E “ready room was an old Airstream trailer (how it got there I have no idea.) Pictures on inside walls were of Sov military A/C, a Cessna 310 with Sky King and of course, topless women
The plant is the “V. I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station.” It is about 10 km NW of Chernobyl City. The firefighters (all seven) were from the station there. 51 23 36.63 N 30 06 23.00 E
The city pictures are Pripyat. NO ONE lives there. Civilian guards patrol it. They gave us less than 15 min in city. On second trip, we wanted to see how “efficient” they were. We bought an AK,, spare mags, belt, hat, cleaning kit and more for $80 US. Deal took about 30 seconds.
Pripyat city center where stores etc. were is 51 24 22.94 N 30 03 27.93 E
Can't find old boneyard where contaminated helicopters and trucks were parked.... supposedly for 25,000 years.