NUCLEAIRES !Bases de données Tchernobyl
Reportage photos en moto !
GHOST TOWN
Houses
NUCLEAIRES ! It is safe to be in the open air in
Ghosttown, it is inside the houses that the danger lies. One must be especially
careful in houses with open windows facing the Atomic Power Plant.
I went for a short excursion with
my doctor friend, he said taking such walk with no special radiation detecting
device is the same as walking through a minefiled with snowshoes on. Doc
has a self made device which is never out of scale.
All doors are open to reduce the risk. Through the door is a distant echo of what life was like here.
New beginning
Most people had to leave everything,
from photos of their grandparents to cars. Their clothes, cash and documents
were replaced by the state authorities.
This is incredible, people lived,
had homes, country houses, garages, motorcyles, cars, money, friends and
relatives, people had their life, each in own niche and then in a matter
of hours this world fall in pieces and everything goes to dogs and after
few hours trip with some army vehicle one stands under some shower, washing
away radiation and then step in a new life, naked with no home, no friends,
no money, no past and with very doubtful future.
These are bikers taking part in a town parade in 1985. They ride old Soviet wimpy bikes. Ohh, a lot of things have changed since 1985, and one of them is my big Ninja that probably produces more horsepower than all of them added together.
The most exciting thing about a Ghost Town ride is to hit the red line on my bike's tacho and split the silence with the roar of a wounded dinosaur, then close throttle so I can hear the ghosts whispering their curses to my 1100cc Kawasaki engine.
And their flag was still there.
All of this happy horsesh.t was for the May 1st Labor Day parade.
The post office is decorated for the Labor Day parade.
May 1st never came in this town. On April 27th, the whole population was evacuated and this street has not seen a parade since....and probably never will again.
The Ghost Cafe
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This was the town in the early 1980's.
This is how it looks now. The park is the most radiaoactive section of town because it is directly in front of the reactor. On the day of the disaster, the North wind brought the first clouds here and it is said that people ran for their lives as they searched for their children in the atomic smoke...... I don't know if it's true.
Perhaps future archeologists will compare
this Ghost Town to Pompeii. The Soviet era is forever preserved here -
in the deadly radiation that will last for many centuries.
Every step toward the little cars
adds 100 microroengen to my Dosimeter reading.
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In the Russian language, a big dipper
is a devils wheel. This one lives up to the name.
On the carousel we read 103 microroengens. This place symbolizes what really happened here.
This is the highest building in town. On the day of disaster, many people gathered on this roof to see the beautiful shining cloud above the Atomic Power Plant. It was the last thing many of them ever saw.
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We are climbing up to the roof of this building.
Elevator doors are open forever.
Someone didn't recieve their mail. A couple of papers and the April edition of "Fish and Hunt" magazine. Maybe they were out of town. Either way, they never returned.
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Vovik+Tanya=love. One wonders if they
survived. And if they did, where they are now. Maybe they will come across
this site and see this picture and remember a happier day.
This man never got his paper. The news in it suddenly became unimportant. The calendar shows that Saturday, April 26. was a special day. Judging by things he left at the door, he liked to fish. The Sundays and Year on this calendar were in red ink and has now faded.
He probably left for a fishing trip
and never came back. That must feel like your life is cut on two separate
pieces - the one before that day and the one after it.
In one of them is your life and slippers
under you bed and a photo of your first love on the piano. In the other
is nothing but your memories and fishing rod.
