Our primary destination on Day 2 was Pripyat, a city just north of Chornobyl. Driving north, we stopped briefly at the Leliv checkpoint where we entered the "Dead Zone", an area within 10 km of the plant. This area is considered to be one of the most contaminated and dangerous areas of the entire Exclusion Zone. Just down the road, a sign for Kopachi village appears on the roadside. I looked around but saw no signs of civilization; only fields, grass, and trees. Yes, the area was evacuated, but shouldn't there be buildings here like the ones we saw yesterday?
Kopachi Village
Kindergarten: Kopachi Village
Unfortunately, Kopachi was highly contaminated by radiation from the accident. Several years after the disaster, the entire village was destroyed except for the kindergarten and one other brick building. The structures were buried in trenches and today appear on the landscape as a series of polluted hills. At that time, the government did not recognize they were burying highly-contaminated objects so close to the water table. Many villages throughout the Zone received the same fate before clearer heads prevailed and the government finally abandoned this practice.
