Nobody could imagine of course the scope of the disaster, because it was unimaginable. I was there when the first sarcophagus was installed on February, 23rd – by that time it was still releasing radiation. As you drove closer to the plant you could feel the smell of iodine. But the most dangerous thing was that orange cloud. When it was snowing heavily, we could see it. Otherwise we couldn’t, of course, we just felt the smell during those releases. We had the means of protection. The best one was “the petal”, of course. But we couldn't stand it longer than 20 minutes in winter. Then it got wet and you couldn't breathe anymore had to change it. They gave us a lot of those “petals”, whole boxes. So you grab a whole pile of them and then replace them one after another so that you could breathe. Gas masks couldn’t help us, nor any other other stuff. Actually, if you stuck to the safety regulations carefully, it meant no smoking, no eating, always wearing the “petal”… But there were guys who smoked. They had problems later - one of them had an ulcer…