Editor’s note: this piece was written in Brussels for the April 27, 2007 subscriber edition. We are running it today as part of our commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. This article includes a chart for the event.
By Eric Francis
I can relate to Chernobyl because I have seen so much environmental damage in the United States. Chernobyl was and is a lot worse, but it never seemed like someplace else, or something we were exempt from elsewhere.
Among these disasters I am most familiar with is the Love Canal area of Niagara Falls, a neighborhood where 700 homes were contaminated with dioxin. There, on the site of the 99th Street School, is a grass-covered clay cap that buries the schoolyard, and the toxic waste dump directly beneath it, three-quarters of the way to the tops of utility poles. They poke up a few feet and follow the line of a long-forgotten street.
Seeing that for the first time one afternoon, I witnessed the tragedy of civilization. It was like finding the Statue of Liberty’s torch sticking up out of the ground. No place is exempt. This is both frightening and reassuring; we’re all in this environmental game together.