Ukrainian-Canadians, are marking the 30th anniversary of the nuclear disaster in the city of Chernobyl, Ukraine. Across Canada today vigils, services and commemorative gatherings are taking place in churches and community centres, solemnly remebering those whose lives were lost, and all those whose lives were irrevocably changed.
Work to remove the radioactive contents of the reactor could take decades
It began in the early hours of April 26, 1986, when an uncontrolled reaction blew the roof off, sending a cloud of radioactive material into the air. This toxic cloud drifted and dispersed into other parts of the USSR, including Russia and Belarus, as well as northern Europe.
Following the collapse and meltdown of the reactor at Chernobyl, an evacuation involving over a hundred thousand people was organized. 180 people still live in what is now a 30-kilometer area known as the Exclusion Zone. At the time, residents exposed to the ensuing radiation suffered from leukemia, thyroid cancer, and other sicknesses.
The effect of the nuclear tragedy is ongoing today with the continuing long-term health problems for many people. The death-toll indirectly associated with the event is estimated to be in the thousands to tens of thousands.
Chernobyl, just 180 kilometres north of Ukraine’s capital city Kiev, is a ghost city now. It’s a place that came to a stand-still as the realization of the scope of the disaster eventually became apparent.
Sergei Marchenko was in Kiev, as the rumours and then the news slowly became confirmed. He was performing in a theatre production and remembers the talk of the disaster and the ensuing line-ups at train stations, the airport and on the roadways as people tried desperately to get away from the city.
ListenMarchenko, who first came to Canada in 2004 as a performer with Cirque du Soleil, remembers his father measuring the radiation with a device that revealed alarming levels in the family’s shoes and clothes.
“Afraid, but with honour… I must do something for… these real heros”
Within the next year Sergei Marchenko was invited to be part of a troupe that was going to Chernobyl to entertain the workers, tasked with containing the disaster. He remebers being “afraid, but with honour” he says. He felt compelled to go, “I must do something for heavy workers, these real heros.”
Now a resident of Montreal, Sergei Marchenko will join the city’s Ukranian community at Mary Queen of the World Cathedral this evening to mark the occasion and remember those who died. He says it is a day of grief for Ukranians.
“Three decades after Chornobyl, the people of Ukraine continue to suffer from its effects. We must never forget this terrible tragedy, which changed Ukraine and the world forever,” stated Paul Grod, National President of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, in a press release. “We gather in our communities to grieve for the victims, and to pray for all those that suffered and continue to suffer the aftermath of this awful disaster.”
In Ukraine today, President Petro Poroshenko laid a wreath and observed a minute’s silence in Kiev before heading north for a ceremony at the plant itself, not far from the Belarussian border.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called the nuclear disaster “a grave lesson for all of mankind”, in a message to the 600,000 people who helped in the clean-up. They’re known as liquidators.
Workers go to Chernobyl’s nuclear power plant daily, from a community deemed a safe distance, to continue work to secure the site. They are building a giant shield-like structure which will be moved over reactor 4 later this year. Work to remove the radioactive contents of the reactor could go on for decades.
Zoya Perevozchenko, 66, lived in Pripyat, the town inhabited by Chernobyl workers which was abandoned in the wake of the accident. She revisited her former home recently. “I barely found my apartment, I mean it’s a forest now – trees growing through the pavement, on the roofs. All the rooms are empty, the glass is gone from the windows and everything’s destroyed”, she told Reuters news agency
There are now tours to the site, a two-day experience inviting people to visit the “most unique exclusion zone on planet earth”.
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