Echoes of Chernobyl. Two stories from the Museum of Heroes
The feat of General Pikalov
One of the participants in the struggle for life in Chernobyl in the spring of 1986 was the head of the operational group of chemical troops in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant zone, Colonel-General Vladimir Karpovich Pikalov.
The son of a red commander, he had the experience of the Great Patriotic War, which he went to as a ninth-grader. In June 1941 was not taken into the army by a volunteer, they were sent to an artillery school, after graduating from 1942 in February, Pikalov was sent to the front. He fought at Stalingrad, stormed Berlin and met Victory at the hospital after being seriously wounded.
After the war, Captain Pikalov retrained from an artilleryman to a military chemist, graduating from the Military Academy of Chemical Protection. For 18 years of service after his studies, he went from the head of the chemical service of the regiment to the head of the chemical forces of the USSR Ministry of Defense, and worked at the last position for another 19 years, the remainder of which was the Chernobyl event.
The date of issuance of Pikalov's travel permit, 24, April 1986, is entered retroactively. On this day, he was at a training camp in the Carpathian Military District. In Chernobyl, the colonel-general was already in the evening on the day of the accident, 26 of April, in order to personally supervise the mobile chemical defense squad he had alerted.
The martinet, not shown in the series, arrived at the crash site, but a specialist with unique experience that the newspapers did not write about. So, in 1980, in the year of the Moscow Olympiad, from the very center of Moscow, from the basements of the Institute of Radio Electronics on Mokhovaya, the military chemists, without making a fuss, urgently took away the poisoned gas cylinders forgotten there - chemical weapon since the First World War. Observing all possible security measures, the convoy with a terrible load then passed about 1000 km, taking it to a military training ground, where the dangerous find was neutralized.
The following year, under the command of Pikalov, the military prevented an ecological catastrophe in the Baltic after several tanks with chlorine had gone off the rails. And these are just episodes from the biography of the general.
The fact that Pikalov saw driving up to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant made him "shrink into a ball." He later recalled:
The radiation reconnaissance shown in the series, which provided clarity on the scale of the disaster, was really spent by Pikalov on the first night after the accident. Here are just the combat readiness of the chemical troops of the USSR modernized with it was much better than that shown on the screen. Thus, having landed the driver, the general went to the ill-fated 4 unit, not on a lead-lined truck with a hurriedly attached dosimeter, but on a regular chemical armored personnel carrier with a stationary dosimetric device DP-3B and an airtight compartment for personnel that reduced the level of a manure tank. rays.
Pikalov recalled:
Colonel-General solved a lot of difficult tasks in the Chernobyl NPP zone, in which he continuously spent about two months. All this time, Pikalov, like other liquidators, was undergoing iodine prophylaxis, taking drugs like calcium one.
Iodine is a chemical element necessary for human life, which is absorbed by the thyroid gland. The explosion at the nuclear power plant resulted in the formation of radioactive isotopes of iodine, which are the main danger in the affected area. Once in the human body, they form ionization products that disrupt the normal functioning of the cells or completely destroy them. To counteract this, radioactive iodine must be replaced with stable iodine by taking iodine-containing preparations.
The D-2P dosimeter owned by Pikalov is an individual radiation detector. It is designed to be worn in the radiation zone for up to 8 hours. By connecting this device to the measuring console, you can determine how much radiation a person received. By the most conservative estimates, Pikalov's dose was about 150 X-rays, which could not but damage his health.
Vladimir Karpovich died in 78 years, in Moscow, 29 March, 2003
By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 24 in September 1986, "For courage, heroism and selfless actions in liquidating the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant," Colonel-General Pikalov was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.
Great Fire Maximuk
The story of the heroism of Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Mikhailovich Maksimchuk, a member of the task force of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant zone, was not found in the TV series Chernobyl. But his actions on the fire, which happened at the Chernobyl NPP a month after the accident, saved the whole world from the tragedy.
Firefighters specialized sites call it “the great firefighter,” the name of Maksimchuk is the fireboat and fire-applied sports competitions, the school in his homeland and the fire station in Moscow, but this outstanding officer is not widely known.
A native of Western Ukraine, he graduated from the Lvov Fire and Technical School in 1968 and, as a holder of a red diploma, chose Moscow as a duty station. A year later, the young lieutenant was appointed to the "lieutenant colonel" post of chief of the HPV (militarized fire unit).
In 1980, during the Olympic Games, he ensured the fire safety of the Luzhniki Stadium, in 1981, after the elimination of a fire at the Oktyabrskaya metro station, he was awarded the medal "For Courage in Fire".
By the beginning of the Chernobyl events, Maksimchuk was the head of the operational-tactical department of the Main Fire Department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. As an expert in extinguishing fires of any complexity, he arrived at Chernobyl on May 13. Since the local staff seriously thinned, a consolidated detachment of firefighters from different parts of the Soviet Union was created, who headed Maksimchuk.
In the first days of his stay at the station, he was in the zone of increased radiation for several hours and even received a radiation burn of the lower leg from the left leg, after which it became impossible to put on a boot on the swollen limb - he continued working in sneakers.
On the night of May 23 a message was received about a new fire at the Chernobyl NPP. Immediately arriving at the station, Maksimchuk assumed command of himself.
Then Maximchuk recalled:
That night, the cables caught fire at the 4-m power unit, in a zone of high levels of radiation. Where is the seat of fire and what exactly is burning, showed intelligence, headed by Maximchuk himself, who had only a respirator from the means of protection. The station was on the verge of a new explosion with horrific consequences. After all, the cable mines could spread to the engine room of the 4 unit with hundreds of tons of oil spilled there after the first explosion, or in the 3 unit with a reactor filled with nuclear fuel.
No instructions on actions at a nuclear power plant at that time did not exist. Under the leadership of Maximchuk that night there were more than 300 firefighters. As the head of the fire, he made decisions at his own peril and risk, and at times they contradicted the then fire regulations. And the fire was extinguished without human victims thanks to the decision of the lieutenant colonel to extinguish the fire in successive groups of 5 people, each of whom was in the high radiation zone for no more than 10 minutes. Maximchuk himself spent in this area about 10 hours.
From the memoirs of Vladimir Maksimchuk:
The unconscious colonel with signs of the strongest radiation was sent to a hospital in Kiev.
The leadership of the USSR, headed by Gorbachev, decided to hide information about the new incident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The word "Chernobyl" has already become a household word and inspired terror to the whole world.
The feat of Lieutenant Colonel Maksimchuk, who received a dose of radiation that exceeds the allowable sevenfold, was rated with simple gratitude. He did not receive any other awards.
Being mortally ill with radiation sickness, he served the Motherland for another 8 years. He led fires of increased complexity in the capital and beyond its borders, eliminated the consequences of the earthquake in Armenia in 1988, and the “chemical Chernobyl” in Lithuanian Jonava in 1989, did a lot of useful things as head of the Moscow Fire Department, which he headed until his death .
Vladimir Mikhailovich died 22 in May 1994, he was 46 years old.
The title of Hero of the Russian Federation to Major General of the internal service Maksimchuk was posthumously awarded 18 on December 2003. He became the first firefighter to receive this award in peacetime.
- Sergey Averyanov
- Museum of Heroes of the Soviet Union and Russia
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