The evacuation order came only 36 hours after the accident. Many people were sent to the site by the then-government without proper protection and notification.

At that time, Igor Magala was the deputy construction boss at the plant. He received a phone call telling him there had been an accident, and summoned him in to help. But he received no more details.

Together with soldiers, police, firefighters and state employees, Igor became one of the very first of 600,000 people who were known as "liquidators". They were dispatched by Moscow over the next few years to try to clean up the fall-out. He recalls what happened then. 
 
"They provided one person with a helmet, a soaker and half a bucket of solution, and his partner with a cinder block. One person would place the cinder block, and the other one poured the solution over it. And that was it for these people -- they were sent home. Later in about five years, all these soldiers started dying one-by-one like flies," said Igor Magala, former deputy construction boss at Chernobyl Plant.

“First, their legs stopped working properly and then all the other problems came. I have a broken thigh and a leg broken in four places. We're not getting any younger, and age brings more problems. I was a completely healthy person before Chernobyl."