The
C hernobyl
Trail of
Tears “GHOST TOWN” Photo courtesy of Elena Filatova
April 14, 1991, an estimated 50 tons of radioactive material were
released at Chernobyl, Ukraine (10 times the amount of fallout at
Hiroshima). Approximately 135,000 to 200,000 people
were evacuated from the area. After the disaster the forest
turned reddish-brown and was later renamed the “Red Forest.”
V illages and towns located near the
reactor now stand empty and aban-
doned. Other villages, once the
home of ordinary people, are for-
saken and engulfed by weeds and
trees. Hope Burwell stated in the
March/April 2004 issue of Orion maga-
zine: “Conscripts entirely demolished 110
settlements, some of which had thousands
of residents. They buried 3,200 farms and
abandoned to weeds and decay 14,500 oth-
ers they knew they should have buried.”
The abandoned cities and villages sur-
rounding Chernobyl present the forebod-
ing images of “Ghost Towns.”
4 • NATIONS
Near Minsk, Missionary Daniel Irving
(BIMI) has had a ministry in a city where
the Russians have located some of the
people of Chernobyl who were exposed
to radiation when that atomic plant blew
up. Describing the people with whom he
worked, Daniel wrote:
“These folks had lived and worked
there in Chernobyl, many of them in the
government and military oversight proj-
ects, or during the mop-up process after-
ward. They were all affected by the radia-
tion in varying degrees. They truly were
the ‘forgotten people' in that the govern-
ment abandoned them after using them
while not even informing them of how ex-
treme the danger was.
So many of them told me how they felt
so destitute after putting their lives on the
line, only to be left behind in the wake of
the tragedy. It was sad to hear their griev-
ances, but because of this, their souls were
rendered much more ready to hear GOD's
promises in the Gospel.”
The people were removed from
their land and placed in this city until
one by one they all die. The suffering is
immense—cancer, deformity in children,
slow agonizing death from radiation.
No LIGHT—utter darkness….A TRAIL