Overview
- The 40th anniversary is bringing fresh attention to survivors’ accounts, with a service announced in Bolton to honor the dead.
- Former liquidator Petro Hurin describes headaches, chest pain, bleeding and a metallic taste within days of starting 12-hour shifts at the site.
- He says few of his 40 co-workers are still alive, urging a disability pension for liquidators.
- The 1986 explosion killed 31 workers and firefighters in the first months, mostly from acute radiation sickness.
- Experts still dispute the full death toll, though thousands of later radiation-linked illnesses have been reported.