Chernobyl's Forgotten Heroine: Maria Protsenko

0:00On April 22nd, back in April of 1986, Reactor IV, the Chernobyl nuclear plant blew up, spewing deadly radiation that hit levels of 10,000 rowing gens per hour enough to kill in minutes. Maria Prasenko, the woman who designed the nearby city of Pripyat for families, stepped up to lead the evacuation of its 45,000. Residents, all while wearing just a blouse, skirt and sandals with zero protection. She spent the night mapping our routes for 1,500 buses, directing the operation from a bridge as radio-active dust coated her bare legs. Kids played in the streets, unaware this wasn't coming back, turning neighbors into refugees overnight. By 6pm the next day, the city was empty, lights out, a total ghost town. The human toll hit hard firefighters died battling the blaze, and thousands of kids later faced thyroid cancer from breathing contaminated air and. Eating tainted food, liquidators, those cleanup crews of soldiers, miners and others suffered massive health drops, with cancers spiking across Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

1:06Prasenko herself got hit with a heavy dose near the toxic red forest, leading to years of coughs, headaches and itching that wrecked her health into. Her 80s, Pripyat still too hot for humans, unsafe for at least 24,000 years. Her story lives on in the new National Geographic series Chernobyl. Inside the meltdown, dropping April 19th at 9pm and 10pm, then 20th same times, reminding us how that silent killer keeps echoing through lives even now.