Through the Lens: Chernobyl's Silent Echoes

In this captivating episode of "Through the Lens," we sit down with Mike Harintan, a distinguished photographer who penetrated the veiled perimeter of Chernobyl three decades post-catastrophe. Harintan's vivid narrative escorts us through the obscured corridors of history, revisiting the Russian government's concealment efforts and the enduring spirit of the survivors. His recent publication, "Chernobyl: Aftermath of the World's Greatest Disaster," encapsulates the last visual chronicles of the exclusion zone before installing the iron dome over Reactor #4. Mike's lens captures the untamed landscapes and the skeletal remains of ground zero—areas beyond the reach of regular tours. He discusses the inevitability of nature engulfing the remnants of the calamity and the paramount importance of documenting the truth before it's swallowed by time. Join us as we unveil the silent echoes of Chernobyl through Mike's eyes, preserving the poignant testimony of resilience and remembrance.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;18;16
Speaker 3
Hello, I'm Al Maskey with Saga Media and we're here with another episode of Uncovered Stories. I'm with Mike Harrington. He's a commercial photographer who happens to be one of the last people correct me if I'm wrong, one of the last people to be in the Chernobyl area just before the reactor was cover for the Iron Dome came up.

00;00;18;16 - 00;00;24;28
Speaker 3
Give me fill me in on the details of what actually happened. What makes your photography unique?

00;00;25;00 - 00;01;03;11
Speaker 1
I felt that as a commercial photographer, I could provide good quality images of what I saw there. I took the role of a photojournalist for the first time. I mean, documenting what was there in a truthful, unbiased and unglamorous way. Photographing what was there was the remnants of reactor number four, which had exploded. But just 100 yards away from there was the new dome that they had constructed, taking almost ten years to finally then be completed and to be slid into place above the reactor.

00;01;03;11 - 00;01;29;18
Speaker 1
It's encapsulated, therefore, to contain the radiation that had been emanating from it for 30 years when I was there. So therefore, I realized that as one of the last photographers there, I might as well do a good job compared to all the other tourists. Yeah, selfies and their small cameras or whatever, handheld cameras and my photos would be of value to historians.

00;01;29;18 - 00;01;36;21
Speaker 1
I didn't think of it as writing a book, but merely for documentation of what I saw there at that time.

00;01;36;26 - 00;01;55;21
Speaker 3
Okay, let's go back a little bit now. We this is a book that you publish or publishing. It may be out by the time most people see this, but it's this is a copy of it here, the aftermath of of Chernobyl. But a lot of people may not know what Chernobyl is. There may be some younger viewers who I remember in 1986, you know, I remember what happened.

00;01;55;21 - 00;02;05;11
Speaker 3
And it was in April of 1986. It was all over the news. But give me a brief history of what you know, of Chernobyl and what led up to what you photographed.

00;02;05;14 - 00;02;41;13
Speaker 1
Like you had mentioned, you didn't know much about it. Neither did I. And it was in April 26th where we all heard that there was an explosion of a nuclear reactor somewhere in Eastern Europe. The Russians didn't admit anything at all. They knew nothing about it. But then as word got out and the radioactive plume had then drifted, northern Russia going into Scandinavia, going into the British Isles, coming back into Europe itself, and circling back through Bulgaria and Turkey, back into Ukraine.

00;02;41;15 - 00;02;50;24
Speaker 1
That's where then that made the news that this is a bigger event than what was first thought of just as a localized.

00;02;50;26 - 00;02;57;23
Speaker 3
So it's Ukraine right now, which is near Chernobyl, is in Ukraine technically, right.

00;02;57;25 - 00;03;02;09
Speaker 1
Chernobyl, a small town in northern Ukraine.

00;03;02;11 - 00;03;02;19
Speaker 3
Okay.

00;03;02;22 - 00;03;07;12
Speaker 1
15 miles south of the border of Belarus, north central Ukraine.

00;03;07;15 - 00;03;17;25
Speaker 3
So what led up to the opportunity to be able to take photographs? What what what led to that? Like I want to take photographs of this. What was the trigger? You heard about it. There was an opportunity. How did that opportunity come about?

00;03;17;29 - 00;03;21;23
Speaker 1
What led to the opportunity was that in 2016,

00;03;21;23 - 00;03;46;12
Speaker 1
earlier that year I just came across a church bulletin in which they were advertising for church volunteers to go to Ukraine to teach English to middle school students. Okay, because I was familiar with the coordinator of that sister and from at that time in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, I approached her and I said, I've done photography for you before, for your religious projects, for your instruction materials.

00;03;46;19 - 00;04;18;19
Speaker 1
I feel that I could provide quality professional images of your summer camps so that you could then use that to promote interest for volunteers to attend future camps. So therefore, she took me on on that and I then also said, You know what, I'm going to be in western Ukraine for those two weeks. I'd like to also go to central Ukraine in order to then get up into Chernobyl so that I can then photograph.

00;04;18;19 - 00;04;47;12
Speaker 1
What I heard right there within those couple of months was the last couple of months before would be visible to tourists. And that's what initiated my interest. Then to find out how I can get into the Chernobyl. And the only way you can get there from Kiev, which is the capital city of Ukraine in central Ukraine, 81 miles north into the Chernobyl area, was by a licensed government appointed tour guides.

00;04;47;14 - 00;05;18;16
Speaker 1
They had different tours available either for our tours, eight hour tours, two day tours, and anything from a private tour, which was the most expensive to tour vans, which held about 15, 20 people or tour busses that held 45. I realized that I don't want to photograph an area that had been abandoned, now filled up with tourists. Airport logic to me said that I have to hire a private guide, so therefore I did.

00;05;18;19 - 00;05;40;04
Speaker 1
And therefore when I went there to Ukraine a couple of months later in June, that's where then the arrangements were made for me to have a private guy pick me up at the apartment along with a driver. And then we went up into the area of the Chernobyl going through three checkpoints with all the documentations that were prepared ahead of time.

00;05;40;06 - 00;05;46;25
Speaker 3
That I was going to ask you about was that you can't just drive up there and just take a private tour. There must be like some sort of process.

00;05;46;27 - 00;06;18;05
Speaker 1
Yes, it's government controlled and therefore with military there and therefore you have to go through three distinct checkpoints where you are showing your papers in order to then pass from one to the other with the understanding is that you have 6 hours in order to go into that whole area, about a 20 square mile area to photograph along the designated routes with the tour busses in the vans and then check out at 5:00.

00;06;18;07 - 00;06;34;14
Speaker 1
If not, then either they come looking for you or then they either find or revoke the licenses of those tour guides because they violated the policy of bringing us to bringing in a visitor in for the morning and they have to be out by.

00;06;34;14 - 00;06;39;23
Speaker 3
That was the reason for that time. Is it exposure or is it just like how they do things at night?

00;06;39;25 - 00;07;16;21
Speaker 1
Two things. First of all, exposure because it's a dangerous place with accumulated radiation exposure. Hour after hour, day after day. Yes, it affects different people at times, but also because they didn't want people then either defacing or looting or bringing back souvenirs and also possibly gathering information, how it could be used by the terrorists in order to then go into the abandoned nuclear site and see what's a value there, including nuclear fuel rods.

00;07;16;26 - 00;07;23;06
Speaker 3
Well, when you went in there, did you plan on putting the photographs together in a book or were you just going there to get some shots? No.

00;07;23;08 - 00;07;47;23
Speaker 1
Had any visions of putting together a book, assembling a book, Because as I tell everybody, my talent is with my second finger pushing the shutter button and certainly not with my fingers on a keyboard looking at words on the screen. No, absolutely no idea that it would turn into a book that was forced upon me by COVID.

00;07;47;26 - 00;07;49;10
Speaker 3
Okay. And I had.

00;07;49;12 - 00;07;56;16
Speaker 1
Well, now what do I do right? That's what initiated assembling all that material into a book.

00;07;56;21 - 00;08;01;16
Speaker 3
So you have all the photographs in the book. Is other stories in the book, too, or they just a photo album?

00;08;01;20 - 00;08;20;29
Speaker 1
Well, the book turned out to be a memoir. Okay. Therefore, yes. It's not only what I saw there, but how I felt at the time, reflecting on my childhood experiences. Born and raised in a Ukrainian family environment like both sets of my grandparents emigrated from Ukraine.

00;08;21;01 - 00;08;23;06
Speaker 3
Okay, so there's the connection there. Yeah.

00;08;23;09 - 00;08;44;26
Speaker 1
Tradition, culturally, religious wise, ethnically, even the food wise, I mean, yeah, tyrannies and the whole of chief and all of those good things and the traditional Christmas dinner, the Easter and all of that. So therefore, yeah, that's where my influence of growing up and carried on to my continued interest in Ukraine.

00;08;45;00 - 00;08;51;22
Speaker 3
So that was at that point it was 20 years old. Or how long, how long did that happened When you're there? 2016.

00;08;51;25 - 00;08;52;12
Speaker 1
26.

00;08;52;19 - 00;08;53;21
Speaker 3
So it's 30 years.

00;08;53;23 - 00;08;54;25
Speaker 1
The 30th.

00;08;54;25 - 00;08;55;13
Speaker 3
Okay.

00;08;55;15 - 00;09;19;21
Speaker 1
Explosion. And of course, they had souvenir pins celebrating 30 years of what had happened. And some of the tour guides had bumper stickers. And so, yeah, and at that time it was a growing industry because they realized that they could profit and make money of that site with foreign tourists. Well, like me, of course, that all came to an end with the Russian invasion.

00;09;19;24 - 00;09;21;01
Speaker 1
Yeah, a few years later.

00;09;21;01 - 00;09;40;10
Speaker 3
when you went in there having attachment to Ukraine, what were some of your feelings when you I mean, personally and professionally? But there's sort of been some deep feelings that a human would feel going in and seeing something that had been abandoned where there was life once and it's abandoned now. Did it make you feel like is hard?

00;09;40;14 - 00;09;45;27
Speaker 3
Tell me how it made you feel when you saw things still laying where they were 30 years ago? In some cases.

00;09;45;29 - 00;10;14;16
Speaker 1
When we first cleared the third checkpoint, that's where then my tour guide deviated from the paved road and knew ahead of time where to go, first of all, without being caught. Right. Sneaking around, but staying away from the tour busses. Right. And of course, on gravel paths, the tour busses don't go there. And he knew that that would give me then access to unseen on photographed vantage points.

00;10;14;20 - 00;10;19;13
Speaker 3
So there's some things in your book that the tour won't find. Absolutely. You're not going to see that stuff.

00;10;19;13 - 00;10;47;29
Speaker 1
In there, beginning with where we went down the one Sandy Path road and then walked 100 yards and there's Pripyat River there and that was the landing zone for many of the supply ships that come in from Kiev through to me for river to bring supplies to build up not only the Chernobyl nuclear reactor sites, there was to be 12 planned and they only got to number four before number four exploded.

00;10;48;06 - 00;11;13;27
Speaker 1
Wow. So in order to house the support staff, temporary housing, but then permanent housing, we're talking anywhere from two story apartments for the supervisors, the tech crew, but also to five, ten, 13 story concrete apartments. So we built a satellite city just a mile and a half away from Chernobyl itself. That city was named Pripyat, named after the Pripyat River.

00;11;13;29 - 00;11;17;16
Speaker 1
When I approached the Pripyat Harbor, everything is quiet.

00;11;17;16 - 00;11;41;09
Speaker 1
it's as if you were in a secluded area of a national park where nobody else was around in the quietness, the remoteness, but also the birds chirping. Seeing the lily pads, there were frogs, probably salamanders, birds like I said before, but also then dragonflies eating the bugs and stuff like that.

00;11;41;12 - 00;11;52;17
Speaker 1
And to me it seemed like this is a nice, quiet, protected place that will be that way from what I heard for many years to come, just because of the radiation factor.

00;11;52;19 - 00;12;00;14
Speaker 3
Well, how did you feel going in there? I can imagine seeing that that was, you know, kind of frozen in time.

00;12;00;17 - 00;12;44;26
Speaker 1
First of all, just by seeing the nature was peacefulness, the quietness. But then once we then took the road and went to the harbor itself, where all the board ships would come, you saw sunken barges. They're partial sunken barges. They're all rested after 30 years and then walking in to the harbor, welcoming center. What you saw there was just the remnants of what that building used to be, the broken glass, the broken stained glass, fragments on the ground, accumulation of dust after 30 years, plants growing inside the building just because of the weather of protection of the building had all gone away.

00;12;45;01 - 00;13;05;08
Speaker 1
The encroachment of nature from all sides, from around, even on top of the moss and even the cracks on the floor, things like that. And that's when it hit me that this place will soon succumb to the forces of nature. And that's what hit me that

00;13;05;08 - 00;13;10;08
Speaker 1
similar to other places in the world, the Aztec, the Inca ruins.

00;13;10;10 - 00;13;28;19
Speaker 1
Yeah. Have been completely covered. And then discovered by archeologists. Someday this will disappear very shortly. What I saw after 30 years of growth, I can imagine that only in another 30, 5000 years ago. After that, nobody will see what I saw.

00;13;28;21 - 00;13;33;13
Speaker 3
Yes, you kind of documented before it. Really? They're not going to it's not like a park they're going to maintain.

00;13;33;15 - 00;13;53;00
Speaker 1
No, there's no maintenance at all in. so no, just keeping it the way it is for tourists to see because it's too radioactive for anybody to come there and to maintain it the way it is rather than rebuild it to show, well, this is the way it used to look like, you know, the photos show that.

00;13;53;08 - 00;13;57;27
Speaker 3
Yeah. Now, does that change your perspective on what you think of nuclear power?

00;13;58;00 - 00;14;06;15
Speaker 1
It changes my perspective after my whole visit is that the way the Soviet Soviets did, it was irresponsible.

00;14;06;22 - 00;14;07;09
Speaker 3
Okay?

00;14;07;11 - 00;14;19;20
Speaker 1
Both in the design, in the construction, in the maintenance, and also in the reaction to any accident that would occur. All of those things are flawed.

00;14;19;23 - 00;14;20;11
Speaker 3
Okay?

00;14;20;13 - 00;14;50;05
Speaker 1
That's where I realized that back home in in Western countries and through my research that I had to now do whenever I'm giving my presentations is to say that the Western design Westinghouse Nuclear, which my dad worked for, I found, wow, what a coincidence. Yeah, but anyway, and his mission was working on the nuclear subs. Well, to this date, I don't know of any people that have died in nuclear sub accidents because of that.

00;14;50;08 - 00;15;04;23
Speaker 1
Nor in nuclear explosions that we've had here anywhere else in North America. Yes, we've had accidents. But as far as the safety of it, the nuclear design has proved superior to any other design.

00;15;04;25 - 00;15;05;17
Speaker 3
So, yeah.

00;15;05;21 - 00;15;14;09
Speaker 1
My confidence, yeah, what we're doing is better. It's not flawless. Yeah. At the same time, much more better monitored.

00;15;14;11 - 00;15;19;12
Speaker 3
Yeah. What is flawless? What are we doing as flaws? Right. That's not much.

00;15;19;15 - 00;15;33;05
Speaker 1
Whenever I talk to people that at some point there will be another nuclear accident and yeah, it which in China they didn't because the Soviet system said we know how to do it right.

00;15;33;07 - 00;15;33;26
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00;15;33;28 - 00;15;54;02
Speaker 1
But also not only to prepare for it but also to ensure the safety of it and also the support of the community of the country, that environmentally this is the way to go, providing that we have these safety standards and to keep politics out of the way. Right by the science.

00;15;54;04 - 00;15;58;08
Speaker 3
Do you give presentations you mentioned when you give presentations, what are they like?

00;15;58;12 - 00;16;28;13
Speaker 1
Yeah, I had to give presentations as soon as I came back because first of all, I wanted to educate the the Ukrainian community, which I mean, they were involved with it. So therefore, rather than me getting on the phone and say, Hi, I'm Mike Harrington from Pittsburgh, I'd like to talk to your local Ukrainians in the church. I went through the coordinator of the summer camps, Sister Anne Lezak, and also her associate, Sister Olga Farina.

00;16;28;16 - 00;16;55;07
Speaker 1
And I said, You do the legwork, you do the phone calls and will go. You can book presentations right after church services or the day before, the day after. And any money that I get collected as donations will go directly through the sisters back to the children in Chernobyl. So I had about 20 to 30 of the church presentations within a three year period.

00;16;55;09 - 00;17;17;06
Speaker 1
But also I had libraries, also had Rotary Club, also then connections with Carnegie Mellon University that I've been there photographer for many years. I just went to the chemical engineering professor that hired me to photograph his graduations. And I said, you know, I went to Chernobyl and I have all these photos and I have these presentations. Would you be interested?

00;17;17;09 - 00;17;43;05
Speaker 1
I ended up speaking three lecture presentations to third year chemical engineering students about my travels to Chernobyl. And I whispered ten to the side and I said, You know, in high school I had to repeat chemistry twice. The first time I go to the second time, I glad to see hearing and talking to third year chemical engineering students at Carnegie Mellon University.

00;17;43;12 - 00;18;23;00
Speaker 1
Like, Wow, yeah, just tell us what you did and also how you felt, but also concentrate the ethics of responsible design and maintenance and then reaction when things go bad. How do you address that? So therefore, I had to do some homework and see where other tragedies happened around the world, like in Bhopal, India. Yeah. Chemical explosion or even, you know, here in America too, such as the site up in Buffalo and even look over here in Canonsburg and how they reacted to the Cobalt that is still in the ground and the suspected link to cancers.

00;18;23;02 - 00;18;30;26
Speaker 3
Wow. What's the usual reaction after someone's seen one of your presentations? It either surprised you or is typical.

00;18;30;29 - 00;19;09;16
Speaker 1
The reaction is mixed because as I look in the audience, I finish off my presentation with a six minute video that I produced myself on in a mode of, yeah, just have the images side by side, a little bit of text, and when the lights go back on, there are people that have tears in her eyes. Yeah, there are other people that said thank you, because those of us that grew up in Ukraine were taught by the Soviets that everything was yeah, So they actually suppressed the information.

00;19;09;18 - 00;19;42;04
Speaker 1
In fact, in my second visit in 2018, where I was hosted by Father Yuri, who then took me onto the back roads, be because he was born in 88, he didn't know anything at all since his birth. Whenever he invited the survivors in his parish to come to be interviewed by me, he was learning about what his parishioners went through because they never sat together in a circle to talk about their experiences.

00;19;42;06 - 00;20;05;28
Speaker 1
So he was appreciative that I brought that audience to him and to myself. And the interviews are in my book. They're also translated so that then the reader can read exactly what happened to each one of them. The other audiences, like in New York. I mean, I had people coming up to me and I said, How can I donate?

00;20;05;28 - 00;20;39;09
Speaker 1
They pulled out their wallet. I said, No, you go to Sister Olga. She's collecting the. Yeah. So within those 30 or 40 presentations and half of them were people offered money. We raised almost $15,000. So yeah, I also auctioned off not, not auction, I'm sorry, with a raffle ticket. And they could then buy a ticket and the winner gets one of my framed 16 by 20 photos, which is a collage of the photos of Ukraine.

00;20;39;12 - 00;20;58;08
Speaker 1
All the churches that I photographed while I was there on tour. just amazed with the architecture there, the different styles, but the maintenance and the dedication that each community has to each one of those churches as a center point of their town like it used to be in the middle. Yeah, where they had the cathedral.

00;20;58;11 - 00;21;04;26
Speaker 3
Now, how is your book categorized? Is there is there a section of churches? Walk me through the way your book is laid out.

00;21;05;01 - 00;21;27;19
Speaker 1
My book is categorized, first of all, by Way of Winter. So therefore, that's the introduction part and what led me to go there, and also the first part where I just was a volunteer, not only photographer but also a teacher. Now I ended up teaching for kids while I was there. Why not? Yeah, and

00;21;27;19 - 00;21;31;10
Speaker 1
that talks about the Ukrainian catechetical summer camps.

00;21;31;10 - 00;22;05;10
Speaker 1
That was the term used to have the students come in for a one week session, day and evening in which they would not only learn the Ukrainian language and the religious part of their Catholic Catholic faith but then also learn English from the volunteers, anywhere from 10 to 20 volunteers. We had come on that trip. Volunteers from America included college students, active workers in their Middle Ages and also retirees.

00;22;05;12 - 00;22;13;29
Speaker 1
So therefore, I joined them just to document what they were doing. But I realized they were overwhelmed by too many kids wanting the attention at the same time.

00;22;13;29 - 00;22;15;04
Speaker 3
All right. Yeah.

00;22;15;06 - 00;22;47;27
Speaker 1
Helping teach the kids how to pronounce the words correctly. The way American and the tricky Ukrainian is speaking English teachers. Yeah, because those teachers were instructed by Russian speaking teachers 30 years ago. So therefore, you have that influence, that accent, and to have American speak in my case with a western Pennsylvania accent. So therefore, that's what I was able to do, not only photograph, put my camera down and then actually teach them.

00;22;48;00 - 00;23;00;23
Speaker 3
Was there actually when you were there taking the photographs, was there one particular moment that moved to the most one area, one photograph or one scene that really struck you personally?

00;23;00;25 - 00;23;44;03
Speaker 1
The parts of the journey which made most impressive to me were cumulative, meaning as soon as I landed there, I saw all of the gold domes of the churches on the countryside, and I said, Wow, you know, they take care of their churches. They're building in the sparkling, you know, as we landed. But then once you meet the kids and that's where then that became the most rewarding part that here I am and I'm connecting with generations that my parents grew up with and now their kids and their kids and just seeing that continuity of the Ukrainian language culture, which I was never dropped into before, I heard about it, of course, like we all

00;23;44;03 - 00;24;16;14
Speaker 1
do if we don't visit four countries. But to be dropped right in there immersed for those two weeks, that was most rewarding. But then getting into Chernobyl blew like not only a culture shock from what's active in western Ukraine and the hustle bustle of the city, But now the total remoteness, the total abandonment coming back after Chernobyl. Then we took a one day tour to both a psychiatric institution and also an orphanage.

00;24;16;16 - 00;25;04;03
Speaker 1
That's what really hit me the hardest and most memorable. Still to this day, every time I open up that book and see those photos, it still touches my heart. The reason why is that the health care system in Ukraine is not equal to, of course, Western Europe, let alone low on America. So therefore, kids that have been exposed genetically by the radiation effects from their parents in their grandparents passed on, then caused genetic defects, anything from physical cleft palate to blindness, to loss of hearing cataracts, spinal bifida, things like that.

00;25;04;03 - 00;25;41;12
Speaker 1
We have an America that we address easily, but yet parents have to give up those children because they can't take care of them. So therefore, those kids either go to a psychiatric institution or to an orphanage. The living parents give up the kids knowing that they'll probably get adopted by a caring, loving family that can provide that health care for them, whether it's in Western Europe or here in America, where they have different relief agencies, adopt a child, adopt the Ukrainian.

00;25;41;27 - 00;25;49;06
Speaker 1
mean, right down the street from me, I found out that, you know, there's a kid there that was adopted 20 years ago. Wow.

00;25;49;08 - 00;26;05;26
Speaker 3
Wow. When you when you were planning to go there, how did your the reality of that trip meet meet with your expectations of what you thought the trip was going to be? Was it was that what you thought it was going to be? Or was there a different reality? Like, I didn't expect something you didn't expect?

00;26;05;28 - 00;26;30;02
Speaker 1
What I expected it to be was not what was there. Only by getting there, putting your feet on the ground, first of all, connecting with the earth, that my ancestors were part of that was always part of me. I said, I am here. Yeah. Returned Now I see the black soil. Now I see the wheat fields, the golden wheat fields in a blue sky which is the Ukrainian flag.

00;26;30;04 - 00;26;36;09
Speaker 1
yeah, and the gold. And so therefore there was always that reminder, that connection.

00;26;36;12 - 00;26;46;02
Speaker 3
What kind of what do you expect people to get from your book? What's your expectation the best scenario of when they see this book?

00;26;46;04 - 00;27;14;06
Speaker 1
The things that I would expect my readers to get is, first of all, an awareness that something like that did happen. They may have heard about it, they may have read about it, but really to dive any further than just what the news is, or looking on Wikipedia and seeing those selected photos or even some photographers websites that have taken the time to go there and to do a serious photo documentation.

00;27;14;09 - 00;27;58;15
Speaker 1
So I hope to add to that. First of all, the body of photos available for the public to see and for researchers and historians to use either for their own education or whether it's they want to then produce that into a larger expanse of East European history as well as nuclear history, things like that. The other thing is, I hope my readers then realize that there's a connection between what happened there under the Soviet system, meaning that the authoritative system of this is the way we do it, not in Chernobyl, but it's all dictated from at that time.

00;27;58;17 - 00;28;38;12
Speaker 1
Moscow So you have the Communist Party telling the military, telling the builders, the engineers, this is the way we want it done, this is the budget, things like that. And therefore the readers will realize that it was the government that was in control of how it was designed, operated, and then addressed the accident after that. The third thing is that, well, I'm sorry, getting back to the second part is where my presentations were titled Chernobyl The Causes, the Cover Up and the Consequences.

00;28;38;19 - 00;29;14;05
Speaker 1
So therefore, my 45 minute presentations that I do two classes, I divided into three parts so that they understand what the consequences is, what the readers now will get in. That third part is the human toll as spoken by the brothers that I photographed and interview. Yeah, as spoken by the survivors that I interviewed and photograph and not spoken by the third generation of the kids laying in their cribs, still in their teens psychiatric institutions.

00;29;14;07 - 00;29;41;14
Speaker 1
Those girls that I photographed in the Cribs in 2018 were the same girls that I photographed laying in the cribs two years earlier. Still touches my heart to this day. It hurts. And whenever I pull up those photos on the screen, I mean, I just stop right there. And as I mentioned in the book, my experience of photographing children laid out in a bit goes back to Children's Hospital as a volunteer.

00;29;41;14 - 00;30;10;27
Speaker 1
There, photographing kids with cancer in their families, Providing professional quality images is a nice family portrait in a hospital environment. So I brought a portable studio backdrop. Yeah, it looked like they came to a studio rather than me going to them. After 11 years of doing that, that kind of hardened my heart in emotions to get through it, to photograph what I saw there.

00;30;10;29 - 00;30;32;22
Speaker 1
But then, like a children's hospital, every time I came home, I laid in bed that night reflecting on how blessed we have it here in America, that they have the best care that my boys grew up without using Children's Hospital except for a broken ankle, broken ribs, Yeah, things like that. But in Chernobyl and in Ukraine, they don't have that.

00;30;32;25 - 00;30;46;10
Speaker 3
So in your book, you not only went to the site of what's been abandoned, you went to the local area where some of these people live still who went through this and moved out. They they left the area to go where And that's where you photographed?

00;30;46;13 - 00;30;47;14
Speaker 1
Yes, I did.

00;30;47;14 - 00;31;07;01
Speaker 1
when I returned back to Chernobyl, I went there with the demands to sister and that yes, I'll photograph one of your summer camps again, but get me back to Chernobyl. But this time, instead of a private tour guide with these other tour agencies, I want an interpreter.

00;31;07;04 - 00;31;48;29
Speaker 1
And I want a driver. And I want a government agent that will take me to the bubbles that still live there at that time. Yeah. 15 Bubbas. That's the name for grandmothers taken from the word babushka. Yeah, you would see the older women and therefore that took nine months to arrange, not only through sister death and Father Yuri, which then coordinated with the government to make sure that then we could drive up to the train station, get on a train station at a remote city Councilor Voltage, which is only 45 miles outside of Chernobyl.

00;31;49;03 - 00;32;20;05
Speaker 1
That city was built in order to then house all the evacuees. It was like an immediate tent city that they had built into apartments in our thriving city. So therefore of the survivors moved, were forcibly moved to, of course, to then move to another area of Ukraine. When I say forcibly, some of the bobos that I photographed, as in my book, it indicated that at gunpoint they were told you have to leave.

00;32;20;08 - 00;32;42;21
Speaker 1
And above I said, you can shoot me here because I'm going to die here anyway. And of course, luckily the Russian army didn't have the heart to shoot an old grandmother. Those grandmothers are now the Bubbas in their eighties and nineties at that time to 2016, they're I'm sorry, 2018 there was 115 left. Do the math that they're dying off.

00;32;42;23 - 00;33;01;25
Speaker 1
Yeah, I knew that. What I am photographing is a time capsule of people that are that will no longer be there, that will no longer be able to tell their story. And it's like the extinction of a human species and let them die because no one else will come back into that area.

00;33;01;28 - 00;33;06;06
Speaker 3
So you have photographs and stories that are unique to your book?

00;33;06;08 - 00;33;19;05
Speaker 1
Totally, because from the videos that I saw, YouTube and things like Ted Talk, there was one reporter, she went there and interviewed one of the brothers outside. Coincidentally the same moment, right?

00;33;19;07 - 00;33;20;04
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00;33;20;06 - 00;33;45;13
Speaker 1
Wow. I think she knew that by going there. And by the way, when my second trip was allowed only as a humanitarian mission, not where I am. Some photographer. God. Seeking to profit from those images, selling them to a magazine or anything like that. In order to qualify as a humanitarian mission, you had to come there with humanitarian aid.

00;33;45;15 - 00;34;18;21
Speaker 1
So therefore, what do I do? I found out from Father Yuri, we will stop at a grocery store right by the train station, get five bags of groceries, mainly canned goods, couple of fresh goods, and we take them onto the train into Chernobyl. Or then we pass the guards and they see why we are there. So I came prepared with five $100 U.S. bills for the Yuri, and I said, Here, here are the here's the money.

00;34;18;23 - 00;34;49;29
Speaker 1
And therefore, 10 minutes later he came out of the grocery store carrying two bags of groceries, supplies. And that's how we got onto the train, got off the train, went to each one of those babies, spending almost an hour at each of the five Baba residences. When I say residents, I'm talking about a cottage, not a brick building, and then some wood galvanized metal roofing siding, things like that.

00;34;50;02 - 00;34;54;14
Speaker 3
Where are you writing down their stories or were you recording them or how were you doing that.

00;34;54;17 - 00;35;18;27
Speaker 1
As a commercial photographer? I never wrote I never recorded all those take photos. Okay. Coming on the camera that I set up on a tripod, my second camera pressed the video in hoping that something would come out while father and sister in Ukrainian were interviewing these brothers. So therefore they had a list of questions off the top their head.

00;35;19;00 - 00;35;32;27
Speaker 1
I mean, I didn't even write anything down. Yeah, okay. What's your name? Were you born? Where did you live? What did you do as an occupation? What's your family stuff. Like what happened during the explosion? Why are you still here? Why did you leave all that kind of stuff?

00;35;32;29 - 00;35;34;03
Speaker 3
It was a video.

00;35;34;06 - 00;35;52;24
Speaker 1
While that interview was going on. I'm photographing details in their house. What's on the wall? What's on the shelves? What's in the bedroom? Anything from photos, religious articles, food storage, brooms, knitting needles, things like that.

00;35;52;27 - 00;35;57;12
Speaker 3
Yeah. What was that video? Now, the shot of those people's interviews?

00;35;57;17 - 00;36;11;23
Speaker 1
Well, again, I had only ten or 15 minutes segments of that. Yeah, I have that right now. I hope to post some of that on my new website dedicated to the book, which is Chernobyl aftermath dot com.

00;36;11;25 - 00;36;21;02
Speaker 3
Interesting. Now what how did how much were you concerned about your safety when you went there in the explosion You were going get did you do anything precautions or how do you feel about that?

00;36;21;05 - 00;36;45;29
Speaker 1
The first time I went to Chernobyl in 2016, yes, I was concerned about my safety because I'm going into a nuclear radioactive site because the tourist industry had built up. I figured that if I would have heard any bad news about visitors coming back and succumbing to radiation sickness, that would have been publicized.

00;37;10;19 - 00;37;26;07
Speaker 1
which we call Geiger counter. It measures the level of radioactivity she showed me purposely many times where we are. Yeah, it's safer, including the places where it's not safe.

00;37;26;10 - 00;37;55;06
Speaker 1
The hospital that we went in, the abandoned hospital in Pripyat, right there in the lobby is where the firefighters were stripped of their clothes, the first responders, and then taken downstairs to further remove their clothes and then hosed off thinking that hosing off irradiated dust will at least minimize their exposure. Those remnants of their uniforms and clothes are still there.

00;37;55;08 - 00;38;16;25
Speaker 1
It's the most radioactive site outside the reactor itself. This is a mile and a half away. I've seen other documentaries in order to go down into the basement, you have to wear hazmat suit with a counter. You have 20 minutes before you have to get out, because we didn't have any of that. I was relying on my tour guides and dosimeter.

00;38;16;27 - 00;38;43;24
Speaker 1
She held it up right to the one roof remnant for the firefighters. And sure enough, while Geiger counter beeping louder and louder. Also, whenever I did the photography in the middle school in which I took my cover photo of the child baby doll with a gas mask because I wanted to put my camera back down, she says, No, I'll carry it for you.

00;38;43;24 - 00;39;09;07
Speaker 1
We don't want that camera back then to sit it to dust, which you will then take it to the car which you you will take back. Yeah. Into the city. So because she was very cautious, I mentioned that in my book, I had total control and total trust. Right When I went back in 2018, I took it upon myself to buy a US made Geiger counter and I wanted to compare those readings.

00;39;09;07 - 00;39;11;05
Speaker 3
Verify its mixture.

00;39;11;08 - 00;39;48;07
Speaker 1
But the second time I went there, our government agent, she did not have a Geiger Geiger counter with her. So therefore I impressed Father Yuri, the translator, along with Sister Lydia, by turning it on. Here are the numbers. And we went there for it, assured that not only my safety, but there's one thing backing up to that. Back in 2016, my younger son at the time, he was 26 years old, he volunteered to come with me to teach English two days before my departure into the Chernobyl area.

00;39;48;09 - 00;40;11;09
Speaker 1
He said, Dad, I'm going to cancel that tour with you out of your comfortable going there. I totally understood and I respected him and I said yes, because a couple of years from now, if you come down with any kind of illness that we may think, yeah, to radioactivity. I don't want that to be on your mind, let alone on your parent's mind.

00;40;11;11 - 00;40;36;10
Speaker 1
Yeah, totally agree. And I'm glad that you told me that. I totally respect that to this day. And the thing is that that was because by doing my research, it's the children, the youngest that first come down with the radioactive bone, including thyroid cancer. Just six months after exposure, kids get thyroid cancer, they die if it's not treated with the iodine.

00;40;36;17 - 00;40;58;18
Speaker 1
You know, there's other tablets that you used to administer for adults, which I did the research. It takes up to 20 years for that radiation effect to then set in where it could be linked. wow. So I did the math. Here I am in my middle sixties. Okay, 20 years. I think I can hear what, 80 radiation effects there.

00;40;58;20 - 00;41;20;27
Speaker 1
There are. When I came home that first time, I had my blood tested twice by the local doctor. He says, Why did you go to Chernobyl? Well, how about testing me? And he says, You're okay because adults then get leukemia, thyroid and all that other kind of stuff. Blood disorders, that's the main thing that hits them after that, I said, test me again.

00;41;20;29 - 00;41;50;12
Speaker 1
I'm clear. I'm still cleared. Wow. Because of that Geiger counter that then that assured me where I went, meaning to the safest areas as safe as what we have here in my house in in western Pennsylvania. There are places, but yet I walk across the street in the field, and that's where the radioactivity would then pick up. Well, the other thing is that I knew that according to this chart, how that area was.

00;41;50;14 - 00;42;16;01
Speaker 1
And when I had my photo self photo of myself taken by Father Uri standing by the radiation sign, and I held the Geiger counter, a book, it shows an astronomical number of reading, which nobody could believe, even the chemical. Wow. And had I been there for longer than a half an hour or an hour or even camped out like some people have threatened to do.

00;42;16;04 - 00;42;17;03
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's lethal.

00;42;17;03 - 00;42;18;08
Speaker 3
Right there. Yeah.

00;42;18;10 - 00;42;33;15
Speaker 1
Just to give you an idea that whenever I stood at the dome that was covered up already still radiate radioactivity coming from the reactor site was 283.

00;42;33;17 - 00;42;35;00
Speaker 3
Well.

00;42;35;02 - 00;42;48;17
Speaker 1
Here in western Pennsylvania, because of rate on the atmosphere are normal levels. Levels are point one, not even one. Well, where I was 283.

00;42;48;19 - 00;42;49;20
Speaker 3
Wow.

00;42;49;23 - 00;42;54;22
Speaker 1
After 10 minutes tour guide said, Come on, Michael, let's get back into the car. Yeah.

00;42;54;24 - 00;42;55;28
Speaker 3
You know, to go.

00;42;55;28 - 00;42;58;00
Speaker 1
Yeah. You know, she doesn't want to get affected.

00;42;58;02 - 00;42;58;23
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00;42;58;25 - 00;43;26;27
Speaker 1
When I went to the Red Forest, which is the most radioactive site in the whole world, because the radioactivity went up and then the clouds moved there over and then they dropped it five miles. my Geiger counter read again. We're here at .11, the enclosed dome standing 100 yards away to 83. And where I stood was 3072.

00;43;26;29 - 00;43;28;18
Speaker 3
Can't see there for very long.

00;43;28;21 - 00;43;29;20
Speaker 1
No. And that's why.

00;43;29;23 - 00;43;37;14
Speaker 3
If we're out of here, just get this car. You hear that thing ticking? We're out of here. Yeah, Taking Pictures like. Wow.

00;43;37;16 - 00;43;38;09
Speaker 1
Yeah, like that.

00;43;38;11 - 00;43;44;07
Speaker 3
Wow. So tell me, what what legacy do you expect you hope to have from your book?

00;43;44;09 - 00;44;13;27
Speaker 1
The legacy is first all that I made the effort as a self assignment commercial photographer to photograph something that I felt would be of historical value and merit to others to learn why I'm here. I'm going to photograph it in a professional way that I'm 40 years of experience, not only photographing architecture landscapes, but now people, and also even patients like I did at Children's Hospital.

00;44;13;29 - 00;44;39;27
Speaker 1
I felt that whole story combined into one book would give a greater overall picture rather than the 20 books that I had written for. Yeah, to that point were, okay, 10 minutes to Countdown or you know what happened here? Why did it happen? Yeah, but the consequences and the cover up, you combine that along with over 400 exclusive photos,

00;44;40;09 - 00;44;52;18
Speaker 1
That's where I feel the legacy of the book will prove its value because of that combination of the content of the way I felt, what I saw, the historical value, and also the people affected by it.

00;44;52;20 - 00;44;59;09
Speaker 3
Fascinating story. Thank you for sharing it. There's nothing else you can share with us. Before we end our podcast, something you wanted to tell us.

00;44;59;09 - 00;45;19;23
Speaker 1
people in fact, whenever advertising that I was at Chernobyl, I'm going to be speaking here. The one sponsor says Mike is one of the last people to be inside the reactor. You. Yeah. They have that take you up to where I was, but not inside.

00;45;19;25 - 00;45;23;04
Speaker 3
If outside was 3000, what's inside?

00;45;23;07 - 00;45;50;10
Speaker 1
Only 282. Yeah, but anyway, with scientific teams. Yes. Because they're covered up with hazmat equipment, things like that. Yeah. They of course have toured it, They've documented it to know that this is what happened for their scientific purposes. But as far as me getting any closer or anybody else closer, No. There's a fence. There's barbed wire. Yeah. The guards there.

00;45;50;12 - 00;45;52;10
Speaker 3
Yeah. Tell it forever.

00;45;52;12 - 00;45;53;24
Speaker 1
Yes, exactly.

00;45;53;27 - 00;45;55;00
Speaker 3
Yeah, That's Chris.

00;45;55;00 - 00;45;59;12
Speaker 1
The threat of nuclear sabotage is there? Not only.

00;45;59;15 - 00;46;00;15
Speaker 3
yeah.

00;46;00;17 - 00;46;36;10
Speaker 1
Or from outside getting their hands on what's still left in there. Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why the design and construction of the Chernobyl was so flawed, because they substituted a concrete dome like we have here in Western countries with a tar papered roof. They it bitumen by 2 minutes. Coal, asphalt, shingles. Yeah, well, so that the roof could be pulled away and they could then exchange the nuclear fuel rods for nuclear enriched fuel rods to make weapons.

00;46;36;13 - 00;46;45;26
Speaker 1
That wasn't a hit. It wasn't for the energy to provide a new enhanced way of living for the people of Ukraine.

00;46;45;28 - 00;46;48;12
Speaker 3
Interesting. Yeah, I've heard that.

00;46;48;15 - 00;47;04;08
Speaker 1
That people don't know about Chernobyl, why it was even built in the first place, let alone the radar tower that I photographed 49 storeys high. Yeah, It was built to protect Ukraine and Russia from incoming NATO's missiles.

00;47;04;13 - 00;47;06;00
Speaker 3
Okay. As well as that was. Yeah.

00;47;06;03 - 00;47;22;03
Speaker 1
The gas mask the children were taught in case we have an attack by the United States. Put on these gas masks carbon filters is if that was to, you know, filter out radioactivity. No way.

00;47;22;03 - 00;47;52;17
Speaker 1
one other thing we didn't talk about was my connection with urban search and rescue, because whenever I left my teaching job after 30 years, I decided to have my photography to be of value to law enforcement, not forensics, but just to photograph what they do similar to what I do other places to show not only the equipment that they use, the techniques, training, videos and things like that.

00;47;52;19 - 00;48;17;21
Speaker 1
So in order to get credentials, I realized that I have to get some kind of academic degree. So at age six, I went to community college and got my two year degree in homeland Security. Wow, that got me connections with Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Urban Search and Rescue. I've been your photographer to this day, and when I went there to train a body of a firefighter his memorial there for the 31 first responders that died there.

00;48;17;24 - 00;48;41;22
Speaker 1
Well, within hours or within days. And that's where that connection was. My first presentation. And back in America, I knew specifically would have to be to the first responders. So they realize that when they are told go into this area, are they equipped, are they trained, what are the consequences? And I found out by photographing our heroes back home, it doesn't matter.

00;48;41;22 - 00;49;18;16
Speaker 1
That's their job. Yeah, that's their mission. They're going in there. And one of the reviewers of my book just last week, he says, people don't realize that are brothers, and that's what he calls, you know, the guys he works with are told to go regardless of the consequences. And hats off to those heroes that I photographed. I feel that, you know, with them, you know, in spirit, whatever they do, they equipped me with my hard hat, with my uniform, with my credentials and stuff like that, so I can be right with them when we have similar disasters response happening here in America.

00;49;18;18 - 00;49;22;12
Speaker 3
Thank you very much for coming on and sharing your stories with the fascinating.

00;49;22;14 - 00;49;31;05
Speaker 1
My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. And I'm glad that I'm able through the use of my photography to educate other people.

00;49;31;08 - 00;49;38;14
Speaker 3
That's I'm glad you did that. I'm sure it'll be a treasure for eons. Thank you. My pleasure.