Volodymyr Pravyk

Volodymyr Pavlovych Pravyk (Володимир Павлович Правик, Владимир Павлович Правик; 13 June 1962 – 11 May 1986) was a Soviet firefighter notable for his role in directing initial efforts to extinguish fires following the Chernobyl Disaster.

Following the event, he was hospitalized with acute radiation syndrome and died sixteen days later.

He was posthumously awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of Lenin by the Soviet Union, and later the Ukrainian Star For Courage (later known as the Order for Courage) in recognition of his efforts.

Volodymyr Pravyk was born in the town of Chernobyl on 13 June, 1962.

His mother, Natalia Ivanova Pravyk, was a nurse, and his father, Pavel Opanasovich Pravyk, a construction worker.

Both were local Poleshuks who had lived in Chernobyl all their lives.

Pravyk's younger brother and only sibling, Vitya Pavlovych Pravyk, was born eight years later.

In his childhood, Pravyk enjoyed reading and was academically inclined.

He developed interests in photography, electronics repair, and mathematics.

His mother expected that he would seek admission to a university to study the latter.

However, with support from a neighbor who served in the fire service, Pravyk elected to enroll in the Cherkasy Fire-Technical Academy at the end of his primary schooling in 1979, and to become a firefighter.

Pravyk completed a three year term of study and training at the Cherkasy Fire-Technical Institute between 1979 and 1982, and graduated as a junior officer in the Paramilitary Fire Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (MVD).

Following this, Pravyk returned to Chernobyl and took up a junior command position in Paramilitary Fire Brigade No.2 (СВПЧ-2) of the Kiev Executive Committee, based at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

By 1986, Pravyk was the commander of the fire brigade's third watch, and a lieutenant in the MVD.

The fourteen-man watch he commanded was not known for a high degree of discipline.

In the words of Major Leonid Telyatnikov, the commander of the fire brigade: "It was a highly distinctive unit. You could say that it was a unit of individuals,... everyone was on his own. There were a great many veterans there, a great many mavericks."

According to historian Serhii Plokhy, the men of the third watch sometimes "took advantage of [Pravyk] and occasionally let him down".

The local men who filled the ranks were often related or from the same villages, and their longstanding relationships were hard for his authority to penetrate.

Nevertheless, Pravyk led by example, and was attentive to the needs and desires of his subordinates.

He brought their concerns and requests for time off and improved living conditions directly to Telyatnikov.

He once publicly opposed his commander over what punishment a subordinate of his was to receive for confusing dates and missing his shift, calling for leniency in addressing the misunderstanding.

The firefighters of his shift held him in high regard.

Leonid Shavrey, a firefighter and squad leader in the Third Watch, is quoted as saying:

In his time with the brigade, Pravyk helped to design and install a remote-control door-opening mechanism for the fire station's garage- which was a rare feature in the Soviet Union at the time.

At the time of the accident, he was planning to continue his education and further his firefighting career by attending a Higher Fire-Engineering School, which would qualify him for a position as a senior officer.

Pravyk's shift was on duty at the time of the Chernobyl accident, and was the first firefighting unit to arrive at the scene.

Pravyk and his fourteen-man shift had seen and felt the explosion, and quickly put on their protective gear, boarded three ZIL-130 AC-40s, a PNS-110 pump truck, and a ZIL-131 AR-2, the latter two being in the fire station's rear garage.

At 1:33 AM, following the initial explosion, the alarm was sounded at the Chernobyl NPP Fire Station, calling them to respond to a fire at the power station.

At this time, as the extent of the damage to the building and the number of fires became apparent, Pravyk radioed the dispatcher at the fire station to call in a number three alarm, which would summon all fire-protection resources from the entire Kiev Rayon to respond to the fire at the power station.

On arriving at the power station just three minutes after the alarm, stopping along the southern side of the plant, Pravyk left with squad leader Leonid Shavrey to determine the source of the fire inside of the building.

Instructing the men outside to wait for instructions, they entered the power station and spent fifteen minutes running around the station trying to establish the source and nature of the fire.

They learned that the roof of the turbine hall was burning as well as the roof of the third reactor, but were unable to determine much else.

Knowing that the turbines in the turbine hall contained flammable lubricating oil and hydrogen gas, and that the hall itself connected the station without any partition, Pravyk determined the fire there to be the most immediate threat and ordered his men to begin firefighting on the roof of the turbine hall, using the external fire escapes to reach the roof.

The duty shift from the Pripyat fire brigade, Paramilitary Fire Brigade No.6 of the Kiev Executive Committee (СВПЧ-6) under the command of Lieutenant Viktor Kibenok, arrived at the power station at 1:45 AM.

With the turbine hall roof fire being fought by Fire Brigade No.2, Fire Brigade No.6 was to address the many small fires ignited on the roof of Unit Three.

Pravyk led a group of five men, including Kibenok and Vasily Ignatenko, to the roof of the ventilation building to begin this work.

The firefighting work that followed was documented by Pravyk's regular radio reports, delivered by the fire station dispatcher to the MVD crisis center in Kiev and noted in the log-book there:

The fighting the fires on the roofs of the reactor building and the ventilation block was made more difficult by damage sustained by the building.

The dry standpipes, which were installed inside of the building to allow fire trucks to pump water up to the roof, had been damaged by the explosion.

It was thus necessary for Pravyk to order that a hose be laid from the ground up to the roof, a height of seventy-one meters.