Brushfire burns in five villages of deserted zone near Chornobyl (04/28/96)

Brushfire burns in five villages of deserted zone near Chornobyl

by Marta Kolomayets
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Tragedy once again hit the Chornobyl region as a fire spread through deserted villages in the zone of alienation on April 23, raising concerns about increased levels of radiation in the area.

The blaze raced through the 30-kilometer zone, just three days before the 10th anniversary of the world's worst civilian nuclear accident at the Chornobyl plant, which occurred on April 26, 1986.

Officials said no one was hurt in the fires, which apparently started in dry, waist-high grass, spreading to five abandoned villages in the zone.

Ukraine's emergency services told the UNIAN news agency that there was no increase in radiation in the area, but firefighters at the scene - equipped with radiation meters - said that the needles on the meters showed big increases. They said flames, smoke and displacement of dust naturally pushed readings higher.

On April 24, Volodymyr Kholosha, Ukraine's minister of Chornobyl affairs, said the fires had caused only minor, localized increases in radiation.

Officials at the Chornobyl nuclear power station said the fire, which broke out about nine miles northwest of the plant, posed no danger to the plant itself.

Although the zone had been evacuated days after the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster, more than 600 people have resettled in the area, and on April 23 more than 150 people had chartered buses to come back to the village of Tovsty Lis to pay respect to their departed relatives buried in the local cemetery. (Sunday was Providna Nedilia, or St. Thomas Sunday, a religious holiday in Ukraine, during which memorial services are conducted on the graves of family members.)

Ukrainian officials suspect that the fires were caused by returnees on their annual visits to their old homesteads.

"The reasons for the fire are being investigated, but the most likely explanation is carelessness by these visitors. By evening all the fires were brought under control and extinguished," said Minister Kholosha on April 24.

Firefighters said the blaze was probably started by a cigarette dropped by one of the families visiting the graves near the village of Tovsty Lis.

Chornobyl Interinform, an information center located within the exclusion zone, reported that nearly 10 hectares of grasslands were destroyed in the villages of Zalissia and Tovsty Lis, about 15 kilometers from the Chornobyl nuclear plant; 10 abandoned houses burned and another 150 hectares of grassland were destroyed. Five hectares of forest and 45 hectares of grassland were destroyed in Sheplevychi, while five hectares of grassland burned around the village of Teresha and another 10 hectares were destroyed at Nova Krasnytsia.

All in all, about 200 hectares (500 acres) of forest and grasslands were destroyed. Abandoned homes, the village church and other wooden buildings were engulfed in flames, burning to the ground in less than half an hour, as the returnees, quickly ushered onto buses, watched in horror.

A reporter from the Reuters news agency and his photographer were at the scene and witnessed the blaze, which began at about noon and lasted close to eight hours. According to Reuters, crying grandmothers, attempting to shield their grandchildren from the flames, wandered back to the buses, crying and wiping tears and flying ash from their eyes. Reuters reported that men, who had clearly had plenty to drink earlier at the local cemetery, tried to gather their relatives for departure.

Despite the fact that radiation levels registered in Kyiv were normal on April 23, U.S. Embassy officials called American citizens living in Kyiv to calm any concerns they may have had.

Embassy officials said that, given the alarming media reports broadcast in the West, they had issued a notice on April 24, which stated in part:

"Ukrainian government, independent and Embassy monitoring of background radiation levels around Kyiv have shown no increase in radiation levels which are now and have been less than that found on the East Coast of the United States. At this moment we know of no threat to the health of anyone living in Kyiv from these fires. At this time there is no reason to take any precautions."

Small forest fires are not uncommon in the 30-kilometer zone in the spring and summer months. Ukrainian television reported that in 1995 almost 100 such fires occurred in the zone, but the timing of the fire this year - just days before the 10th anniversary - underscores the poignancy of the Chornobyl legacy.

However, Vasyl Melnyk, the chief of the Kyiv regional fire service, called the fire the "most significant" since the 1986 accident.

Radiation leak at plant

In other developments, Interfax Ukraine reported that radioactive contamination was registered at unit 3 of the Chornobyl plant at 12:25 a.m. on April 25.

Chornobyl NPP Chef of Shift Andriy Shakhman said it was caused by a violation of rules in cleaning the premises in the course of replacing filters.

As a result, radioactive dust from a filter got onto the floor of four rooms. The registered contamination level was two to seven times higher than normal (the norm is 2,000 beta-particles per square centimeter per minute).

No irradiation of personnel in excess of the admissible daily levels was registered. According to preliminary estimates, the event was level 1 on the international scale of incident at nuclear power plants. A fact-finding commission is at work.

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