19th Chernobyl Anniversary

Today marked the 19th Anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster... Sara and I have done some reading on understanding what happened during the Chernobyl disaster, and took our time in Russia as opportunity to understand more about what happened and was communicated to people in Russia while this was happening. Something you may not know... but as a result of the government's handling of Chernobyl, citizens within the "Chernobyl zone" - which includes Novomoskovsk, are given an extra week of vacation time (Russian employees get 4 weeks of vacation annually... no more, no less... but in Novomoskovsk (and other villages of course) there is a 5th week of vacation for anyone who was physically in a Chernobyl region during the disaster call the "Chernobyl Vacation" - it is called exactly that in the federal labor law.

Anyways, the driver we use exclusively in Novomoskovsk, Andrey, told us that it was about 2 weeks before people in Novomoskovsk knew what was happening in Chernobyl - the media provided no data. Everyone was told all was OK... meanwhile I remember being in the USA during this time - and we knew same-day exactly what was happening.