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