Trump’s Chernobyl

 

Thirty-four years ago in Moscow I watched the government mishandle a disaster. Why does it feel like it was just yesterday?

 

 

It seems terribly wrong that so fine a spring day should be carrying a deadly danger. The daffodils and cherry blossoms proclaim renewal and hope; the crisp, clear air seems incapable of anything so treacherous.

Yet we walk in fear. We want to scrub ourselves again and again against the invisible attacker; we wonder where to hide, how to escape. What can we give our children to protect them? Should we stock up on food and toilet paper? Can we trust the government, which seems bent on making soothing sounds and putting blame elsewhere?

It’s the spring of 1986, and I’m in Moscow with my family as The Times’s bureau chief. Since April 26, when a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant erupted and spewed radioactivity far and wide, we have been wrestling anxiously with the unknown — as reporters, trying to distinguish fact from propaganda; personally, trying to cope with a threat that rides silently and invisibly with the wind.

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Data: 13.03.2020

Fonte: www.nytimes.com