The senior medical assistant T. Marchulate recalls the tragic night of April 26, 1986 at the Pripyat Hospital: “I looked at the ambulance dispatcher Moslentsov. The tears literally flowed from her eyes. There was a roar in the hospital. The victims who were hospitalized from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant began to vomit. They needed urgent help, but there weren’t enough medical staff. I was surprised that many of the enrolled patients were dressed in military clothes. They were firefighters. The face of one was purple, the other - on the contrary, white like a wall, many of them had burned faces and hands; some injured were shivering. It wasn’t a sight for the faint of heart, but I had to work. I asked the arrivals to put their documents and valuables on the window sill. There was no one to rewrite all this, as it should be ... The therapeutic department received a request that no one take anything with him, even a wristwatch — all these things, as it turned out, had already been subjected to radioactive contamination. Part of the therapeutic department was under repair, and the rest was completely filled with people. Then we decided to let those who lay there before the accident go home just in hospital pajamas. The night was warm.’’

The fireman had extinguished the fire without wearing any radiation protective suits (also they didn’t know that they worked in a radiated area). Unfortunately all of them passed away during a few weeks in Moscow's Clinical Hospital No. 6.

Tools, medical instruments and documents were left in a mess everywhere. Radiation levels here can be considered high; in the entrance of the hospital there is a part of a fireman’s suit, which emits 1 roentgen per/hr. Radiation levels below 30 micro roentgens are considered normal (1 roentgen = million micro roentgens).