Sunday, April 24, 2016

FOCUS-No place like home, even in the area of ​​the Chernobyl disaster – swissinfo.ch

International Reuters

By Matthias Williams

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (Reuters) – For some people live away from home is so unbearable that I decided to return, though his home is in the middle of the area’s worst nuclear disaster in history.

Maria Lozbin was one of the tens of thousands of people evacuated from their homes after the Chernobyl accident in April 1986, but returned six years ago with his family to live in the territory within an exclusion zone of 30 kilometers where the risk of radiation poisoning persists.

Lozbin, of 69, wearing a shawl, said the population that was evacuated was filled with alcoholics and drug addicts.

the house that moved was so poorly constructed, with a huge crack from the roof to the ground, he feared die or be crippled by falling debris. “Living there was like waiting for death,” he said.

Now she lives with her son and his family again in Chernobyl, in an area which can only be accessed by crossing a control and where the guides accompany curious tourists with radiation meters.

in contrast, there was dead silence in nearby abandoned Prypyat, where a rusty wheel and a nursery full of toys, dolls and small beds are a grim testimony the scope of the disaster.

on Tuesday the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine which then belonged to the Soviet Union commemorated. A safety test went wrong in the fourth reactor of the nuclear power plant sent clouds of nuclear material to much of Europe.

The accident left 31 people dead immediately and forced tens of thousands to flee. The final death toll by related to radiation diseases, like cancer, is controversial.

SOUND OF BIRDS

A Greenpeace report published before the anniversary citing a Belarussian study estimated the total number of cancer deaths linked to the disaster in 115,000, compared to the calculation of 9000 the World Health Organization.

the Greenpeace study also said people living in the area continue eating and drinking foods with dangerously high levels of radiation.

in particular, “the exclusion zone of 30 km around the Chernobyl reactor remains highly contaminated and unfit to live there,” he said.

But that matters little to Lozbin, one of about 160 people estimated to have returned to the area.

“I do not want to go to Kiev. Why would that leave this nature? Where could hear cuckoos? Where could hear nightingales? “said the daughter of Mary, Oleksandra Lozbin.

” We have decided to save the history of Chernobyl, “he said. “We hope people go back and live here, and that their children and grandchildren to see what life was like here, what kind of cradles sleeping children, what kind of boxes people stored their belongings and books,” he said.

the husband Oleksandra, who grew up in a village seven kilometers away, began to make short visits to Chernobyl in 2008 and the family settled permanently in 2010.

“My husband wanted to return to this land all his life, “he said. “He came back when everything was closed, when it was forbidden to come. He crossed through the fence,” he added.

Oleksandra hopes to inspire others to return. To remind people how life was before the accident, the family has created a makeshift museum in a house across the street with objects collected in the houses nearby field.

(Additional Information Margaryta Chornokondratenko and Sergei karazy. In Emma Pinedo)

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