Vasily Ignatenko Biography
Vasily Ignatrenko was just 25 when he succumbed to slow death via radiation poisoning after fighting the fires of Chernobyl.
Vasily Ignatenko: Chernobyl Firefighter Was a Real Person https://t.co/QfZS09JjQc pic.twitter.com/9uW46U5OQa
— Public News (@PublicNewsTV2) June 3, 2019
You sat through Vasily Ignatenko’s slow and heartbreaking death, watched his wife stay by his side so he wouldn’t die alone all while ignorant of the harm she was incurring to not only herself but their unborn much wanted child, but had to shut it off because
— Jᴇɴɴɪғᴇʀ (@oyofmidmidworld) May 29, 2019
Even after more than three decades, the death toll of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is still wildly disputed. According to Newsweek, the wafting clouds of radioactive material over Ukraine, Belarus, and even as far as Sweden, killed 4,000 people. That’s what U.N. agencies found, at least. Others estimate deaths in the hundreds of thousands.
Vasily Ignatenko Early Life
Born in Spiaryžža, Russia on March 13, 1961, Vasily Ignatenko was one of the very first responders at the Chernobyl plant in Pripyat. He was 25 years old when he tended to the blaze. Determined to do his job no matter the dangers, he took to the building’s roof.
https://t.co/8FYuvpR6Dh
this is heartbreaking a bit— Amelia (@TheJollyWriter) May 28, 2019
Despite the fact that a universally agreed upon figure is nonexistent, Chernobyl was one of the most historic disasters of the 20th century.
The trouble started when the facility’s RBMK Reactor No. 4 experienced an unexpected surge of power, exploded, and blew the roof off. The open-air graphite fires weren’t extinguished for nearly two weeks, causing plumes and plumes of deadly radiation to float over and settle on vast territories of Russian and Eastern European land. To this day, children in the region are born with birth defects.
The Chernobyl Meltdown Of April 26, 1986
Reading the words of Lyudmilla Ignatenko, wife of the dying Chernobyl fireman Vasily Ignatenko, and it gives new haunting meaning to the Larkin line, “What will survive of us is love.” pic.twitter.com/GfIWJlHrnB
— Darran Anderson (@Oniropolis) May 28, 2019
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station took its name from a medieval town nine miles away. The first reactor was completed in 1977 and the whole town of Pripyat was developed around the site. Workers and their families settled there while the USSR envisioned the city as a model for its atomic future. Then, in 1986, disaster struck.
The character played by Jessie Buckley in the #Chernobyl drama is married to a firefighter called Vasily Ignatenko. He was a real person: we interviewed his mother in 1993 – she just walked up to us on the street, in front of his statue. #BlackWindWhiteLand pic.twitter.com/kXevKzFTbn
— Gerry Hoban (@ramblinghobo) June 1, 2019
The disaster itself began with a seemingly innocuous test on Reactor No. 4 intended to gauge how functional the plant could be during unexpected power loss. The goal was to see if the power generated from steam turbines could be effectively transferred to backup generators.
After he died, Vasily Ignatenko’s body was so radioactive that he had to be buried under layers of zinc and concrete in order to protect the public from his corpse. https://t.co/ifjtObt1rV
— AllThatsInteresting (@ATInteresting) June 1, 2019