On the night of April 26, 1986, when the reactor exploded, firefighters were called in.
They arrived with no protective suits, only standard equipment, believing they were facing a normal blaze.
They sprayed water onto the flames devouring the building, but what they couldn’t see was the radioactive cloud already consuming them from within.
Many of them died in the days and weeks that followed, heroic victims of an invisible enemy: radiation.
They are remembered as the first martyrs of Chernobyl.