Leonid Telyatnikov

Leonid Petrovych Telyatnikov (Леонід Петрович Телятніков; 25 January 1951 – 2 December 2004) was a Soviet, and later Ukrainian, fire brigade commander notable for his role in directing the early stages initial response to the Chernobyl disaster.

Telyatnikov served many years as an officer in both Soviet and Ukrainian firefighting organizations, working in a variety of junior and senior leadership positions throughout his career.

Leonid Petrovych Telyatnikov was born on January 25, 1951, in the village of Vvedenka, located in the Kustanay Rayon of the Kazakh SSR of the Soviet Union.

(Now the Kostanay Rayon of Kazakhstan.) He completed his primary schooling there.

Following his graduation, he worked for a time as an electrician at the Kustanay Auto Repair Plant before beginning his fire fighting career in 1968.

Telyatnikov enrolled as a cadet in the Sverdlovsk Fire-Technical Academy in 1968.

Having completed the three-year program, he graduated in 1971, becoming a part of the Paramilitary Fire Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR (MVD).

After his graduation, he became a fire safety inspector in the Kustanay Rayon, serving in this capacity for two years.

In 1973, he was reassigned to the MVD of the Rudny Executive Committee, serving as a fire inspector in the city for a year.

In 1974, Telyatnikov enrolled in the Higher Engineering and Fire-Technical Academy of the MVD in Moscow.

Finishing the four-year term of study, Telyatnikov graduated in 1978.

Telyatnikov then returned to Kustanay and became the head of the Paramilitary Fire Department of the MVD of the Kustanai City Executive Committee, a position he held from 1978 to 1980.

From 1980 to 1982, Telyatnikov was the deputy head of Paramilitary Fire Brigade No.69 in Kustanay.

In 1982, Telyatnikov moved from Kustanai to Kiev.

In his first year there, he served as senior engineer of the group for supervision of special objects of the Fire Safety Department of the ROVD of the Kiev-Svyatoshinsky District Executive Committee of the city of Kiev.

In 1983, he was given command of Paramilitary Fire Brigade No.2, the fire brigade tasked with the protection of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, moving his family to the nearby city of Pripyat.

At the time of the Chernobyl disaster, Telyatnikov, now a Major in the MVD, was vacationing with his wife and children at their dacha outside of Pripyat.

He and his wife were awake, waiting for the cold water to come on the tap, when several explosions were heard.

Unalarmed, they believed that they had heard the sound of supersonic aircraft passing low overhead, which was a common occurrence in the area.

Soon after, at around 01:32 or 01:33 in the morning, Telyatnikov was telephoned by the fire dispatcher, informing him of the accident and summoning him to the power station.

Telyatnikov quickly put on his uniform and telephoned the Pripyat Militsiya Station, asking the duty officer there to send a car to take him to the station, which was four or five kilometers from his dacha.

Arriving at the station around 1:45 in the morning, Telyatnikov found that the response to the fire had already begun.

As commander of Paramilitary Fire Brigade No.2, charged with the fire protection of the station, he assumed command of the fire-fighting efforts.

One of his first actions was to order a visual survey of the building to determine the locations of the many fires:

Telyatnikov visited the Unit Four control room, and was told by Deputy Chief Engineer Anatoly Dyatlov that with the fire on the roof of the turbine hall under control, the priority must be the roofs of Unit 3 and the ventilation block.

Around 02:30, Telyatnikov ordered three firemen to the roof of the ventilation block to relieve the first group of firefighters which had been fighting the fires ignited there since the beginning of the emergency.

This initial group, which included Volodymyr Pravyk, Viktor Kibenok, and Vasily Ignatenko, was already suffering from the effects of radiation exposure and descended the fire escape from the roof with difficulty.

After their leader, Lieutenant Pravik, reported to Telyatnikov that the fire on the roof of the power station's third power unit had been extinguished, Telyatnikov, noting that he and the men with him appeared very unwell, ordered them into a nearby ambulance for evacuation to the Pripyat hospital.

Soon after, on the south side of the station, Telyatnikov ascended the fire escape to the roof of the turbine hall and ordered firefighters there to maintain a fire watch there until relieved.

By 03:30, Telyatnikov was himself beginning to experience nausea and retching, initial symptoms of radiation exposure.

He was evacuated to Sanitary Unit No. 126 – the Pripyat Hospital – around this time.

Experiencing only the mild initial effects of radiation exposure, and unaware of the extent of his injuries, he was able to talk, smoke, and walk around with fellow firefighters.

As the extent of the disaster and the severity of the radiological injuries sustained by first responders began to be understood, the decision was made to evacuate Telyatnikov and the other hospitalized firefighters and plant staff to Moscow.

By bus to Borispol Airport in Kiev, and from there to Moscow by air, he was taken to Hospital No.6, a hospital run by Sredmash (the state ministry for nuclear energy) and the All-Union Physics Institute, which had a specialized department for treating radiation injuries.

By this time, Telyatnikov was beginning to suffer from the more severe effects of his radiation exposure.

He had lost consciousness in the course of transfer from Pripyat to Kiev by bus, and his condition continued to deteriorate.

His bone marrow had been damaged by ionizing radiation, lowering his white blood cell count, weakening his immune system and leaving him vulnerable to bacteriological infection.

He suffered from a fever of over 40°C, and his lungs and respiratory tract became inflamed.

His sisters and father were summoned to Moscow as potential bone marrow donors, should Telyatnikov's white blood cell count not recover and it prove necessary to attempt a bone marrow transplant.

However, Telyatnikov did begin to improve.