Alan in Chernobyl - Part 3 - Pripyat School

 

Pripyat, the famous ghost city. When it was finally evacuated two days after the accident the residents were told they'd only be gone for three days. In reality they were never allowed to return. In only three hours the whole city was emptied and as a result personal possessions, homes and businesses were left as they were on evacuation day. Looters over the years have taken almost everything of value but the feeling of a town suddenly abandoned still holds strong here.

 

 

 As we rumble down leaf-covered streets, you can see how overgrown everything has become. After twenty years, the trees are taking over.

 

We drove past blocks of deserted buildings. The atmosphere was eery, post-apocolyptic.  

We pulled over next to a building and exited the car. Our guide urgently told us to get back in. We drove on as he explained we would skip this stop as he had spotted looters and didn't want us to disturb them. Despite it being illegal and of course highly dangerous, some locals still enter the exclusion zone to scavenge the last remaining items of value.

We pull over a hundred meters further for our first stop in Pripyat - the famous school.

 

A football and rusting climbing frame in the playground.

 

Basketball court.

 

 

 

Inside the school - stripped bare by looters.

 

 

In all the buildings we entered, the ground crunched beneath your feet from broken glass, cracked lino and other debris.

 

Amazingly, even after over 20 years, the books have survived. Despite being exposed to the elements they are still in decent condition, all things considered. The guide told us the looters had no interest in books. Seeing them, I conjured up images of what the school must have looked like before the evacuation.
 

Me and Damien were given twenty minutes to explore alone. Appreciating the freedom we delved deeper inside.

 

 

  

 

The gloom stopped my camera from auto-focussing properly. All the windows were like this. I've read that the authorities deliberately leave doors and windows open in some buildings so visitors and looters don't injure themselves.

View from a school window.

A coat on the staircase, discarded on evacuation day perhaps?

Amongst the books strewn around the classrooms were jotters. I leafed through this - written over 23 years ago - a strange sensation. I wonder what happened to the child who wrote this, their family, and the other children who studied here. Where are they now? Did they suffer long term radiation illnesses such as cancer as a result of the accident? These are questions which you ask yourself, but you'll never know the answer to.

What we do know is that at least a hundred, and probably hundreds more, citizens of Pripyat got radiation-related illnesses. It's hard to exactly quantify the toll because of the scale of evacuation and secrecy from the government of the time. The web is dotted with stories of people who were evacuated from Pripyat and how it affected their lives - definitely worth looking up. They were uprooted from their homes and were never able to return. The kids from this school must be in their early 40's now.

Lenin

 

Messages left by tour groups and operators.

 

Note the conveniently placed doll on the middle desk. Some objects have been deliberately placed in the "touristy" spots of Pripyat probably by photographers to get their post-apocalyptic shots. Of course you're not supposed to touch anything for preservation's sake - and also because they can be irradiated!

 

Art class.

 

All the classrooms upstairs were like this.

The toilets were in pretty bad shape too.

 

The other side of the school, perhaps more exposed to the elements, was in a complete state.

 

Our free exploring time up, we headed back to the car.

Although tours to Chernobyl are infrequent (most of the tour operators - and there aren't many - do them once every few weeks), there can be up to 20 people in a coach trip. You can see the impact of those large groups in these famous buildings that everyone visits - for example footprints in the dust and items which have been moved. This is why me and Damien decided to go for a private tour instead - we got longer to explore, more locations to visit, we had the guide to ourselves and most importantly the atmosphere wasn't ruined by having lots of tourists clattering around. All we could hear was the wind in the trees, the crunch of our footsteps and the occasional bird cry.


 

Please continue reading in Part 4 - Pripyat Swimming Pool:
http://chernobylvisit.blogspot.co.nz/2010/01/alan-in-chernobyl-part-4-pripyat.html