Almost 3 Decades Later, Local Film Producer Recalls Chernobyl Experience

They travelled to what was still the Soviet Union at that time, by way of an invitation extended to a Lethbridge organization which had ties to what was known as Bielorussia (Belarus or White Russia), an area east of Poland and west of Russia. Through this group, the government was looking for assistance on how to deal with the disaster and the impact it was having on children in the region.

When they arrived in September of 1990, the group spent a week in and around Minsk, the capital of Soviet Ukraine, and a second week in the Leningrad (now Moscow) region. All of their communication was done through an interpreter, Mikhail Kirichenko

While in Minsk, the group went to a city hospital and saw first-hand the effect that the nuclear fall-out from Chernobyl was having on children in the form of various types of cancer.

McNally remembers the experience as though it was yesterday, instead of 26 years ago. He related the significant culture shock upon seeing the hospital.

“The hospital was poorly equipped in terms of medicine and know-how back in that time frame. What we saw – I wouldn’t say was medieval but, they were certainly not up to the standards that we were familiar with in Canada. Very basic supplies – they were re-using needles and children’s bandages didn’t look very clean, the hospital environment was very dirty and we actually entered the hospital through a plywood door.”

While the group’s main purpose was to create a documentary for the local audience, they were exposed to circumstances which prompted the realization that they were dealing with something much bigger than a story for Southern Alberta.

McNally says the group felt a strong need to do something more than document the situation after seeing mothers sitting with their dying children in the hospital.

“The people were actually relating to us as if we were representing Canada and the pleas from the mothers in the hospital with dying children really affected us. We decided that not only would we do the documentary but we also created a local charity that helped to fund raise and we sent several shipments of medicine over to the hospital.”

The documentary was called, “Children of Chernobyl.” In the years after it was created, several groups were formed in Canada under the same name, with the purpose of bringing children to Canada for the summer to enjoy clean air and healthy food.

With help from the Southern Alberta Art Gallery the group also created an exhibit that travelled the country. It included pictures drawn by the Chernobyl children depicting their experiences.

McNally says it was a calamity they (the Soviets) were not prepared or equipped to deal with.

“We tried to help them the best way we knew how.”

At the time of the explosion, there was a 30-kilometre zone set up around Chernobyl, which was basically called the exclusion zone, and everyone that was in that immediate area was moved away. McNally noted it was very arbitrary as people on one side of the fence were moved, while people on the other side of the fence, who experienced the exact same fall-out happening on their farms, were left where they were at.

The crew was one of the first international groups allowed into the exclusion zone and toured one of the villages that had been abandoned. What shocked them was the arbitrariness of radiation exposure.

McNally says they had a dosimeter (device that measures exposure to ionizing radiation) with them, which showed radiation readings were lower in the exclusion area they visited, than a school yard they had been to just two hours away earlier in the day. He explained the difference was caused by wind currents which picked up air borne radiation.

“It was a huge issue then and continues to be a huge issue.”

McNally has continued to keep up with the changing circumstances around Chernobyl.

“For many years after, Russia continued to use Chernobyl’s nuclear power plant. There were four reactors – the one that exploded couldn’t, obviously, be used, however, the other ones (reactors) were used because they needed the electricity and the other three reactors continued to function for a number of years afterward. So, people still had to go in and work there. It didn’t make sense but, that was the world they were living in.”

McNally says that 30-years later, Pripyat, the city in the exclusion area that was evacuated, is now a tourist destination.

“For the right money and the right connections, you can actually go in and tour around.”

There is drone footage of the abandoned area which includes a Ferris wheel that has been documented in video games and movies. A fair was set up in Pripyat just days before the reactor explosion but was never used by the town’s children and had to be abandoned.

McNally says he has been able to maintain contact with the group’s interpreter by way of Facebook. He would now like to see pictures of the village his group visited in the exclusion zone, just to see how much the abandoned village would have changed in the ensuing years.

For McNally’s group, the experience was ‘once in a lifetime’, while it drastically changed, and in many cases, ended the lives of others. While there were roughly 31 people killed, mainly reactor staff, by the explosion, the exact number of people who have died from exposure to radiation is not known.

In 2006, the International Journal of Cancer predicted the death toll due to cancer at about 4000. However, that number could be much higher, if cancers related to fall-out across greater Europe are factored in.

by Dori Modney (@Dori_Modney on Twitter) - Photo credits to Jim McNally

Almost 3 Decades Later, Local Film Producer Recalls Chernobyl Experience

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