The lieutenant who led the first response to the Chernobyl disaster
In short: In the early hours of April 26, 1986, Lieutenant Volodymyr Pravyk was in his office writing a letter. Minutes later, he was commanding a desperate battle against a nuclear catastrophe, leading a team through melting asphalt and lethal radiation to save the plant.
Volodymyr Pravyk was a highly skilled junior officer in the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs. Known for his interest in electronics and mathematics, he was a competent commander who had even helped install a rare remote-control garage door mechanism at his station. On the night of the disaster, he was leading the third watch of the Chernobyl fire brigade.
When the reactor exploded at 01:23, Pravyk was among the first on the scene. He coordinated a complex response, requesting a stage 3 alarm and directing various units to specific locations, including the southern wall of the turbine hall and the roof of the ventilation block. His reconnaissance efforts were critical in determining the scale of the fire, even as communication lines failed and the environment became increasingly hostile.
The conditions were extreme. Firefighters had to manually haul hoses seventy meters up the reactor building because the dry pipes had been shattered by the explosion. On the roof, they faced melting bitumen that stuck to their boots and intense heat. The radiation levels were staggering; some men worked in fields of over 6,000 roentgens per hour.
After the intense effort, Pravyk showed visible signs of acute radiation syndrome, described by Major Leonid Telyatnikov as having a red, bulging face and wheezing. He was hospitalized and died sixteen days later. He received the Order of Lenin and the Hero of the Soviet Union title after his death for his courage.
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