Chernobyl
I vaguely remember hearing something about something happening in the Soviet Union (as it was called then) and I think it had to do with the Chernobyl disaster.
I had lunch with Misha and his wife (Olga? I think that’s her name. I’m going to use it as her name for the rest of the post unless I figure out it’s the wrong name) today after working at school (mowing the lawns is so much fun…or something like that). He reminded me that today is the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the meltdown.
Then Olga told me that she is from Chernobyl. She remembered they were outside for a parade. Then a cloud came and started dumping radioactive “rain” on the city. She said the trees lost all of their color. She remembered the troops arriving in protective gear, spraying down the streets with some type of protective chemical on the streets and buildings and such. The kids didn’t know any better (they hadn’t heard any news of an explosion or anything), so they hung around the soldiers in their funny suits and tried to play with them. It just blows my mind that the government went out of their way to keep the meltdown a secret from their own people. Misha lived somewhere else in Russia and he hadn’t heard about the event when it happened, either.
Most of the people from Olga’s generation now have some type of cancer. Genetic problems have been passed along to their kids, too.
I came in contact with history today. It made me both angry and sad to hear of what happened on that fateful day.
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