Archive News
Chernobyl’s orphans still needing help 25 years on
Date Published: {J}
If the world needed a reminder of what happens when nuclear energy goes wrong, it got it in March when there was an explosion at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant in the wake of an earthquake and a tsunami. One of the most developed countries in the world was forced to dump seawater from helicopters to tackle the explosions at the plant’s reactors.
Thousands of people were evacuated from the area, thousands more warned to remain indoors. Many had no running water or electricity, while vegetables, milk and even the nearby sea, were contaminated.
The Fukushima disaster was ranked as a Level 7 on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, putting it on the same scale as Chernobyl disaster, which occurred on April 26, 1986.
The millions of people in the Ukraine and Belarus, who survived that disaster don’t need any reminding about the havoc a nuclear explosion can cause.
Chernobyl’s impact on people’s lives was far worse, because the USSR government didn’t inform people of the accident until April 29, after Sweden detected contaminated ash cloud in its airspace. Also, that nuclear disaster added to social problems which were rife in the former USSR.
A quarter of a century on, Chernobyl’s impact is still being felt in Belarus, where 70 per cent of the nuclear waste fell, according to scientific reports on the accident. That is why groups like the Aughrim based Sunflower Chernobyl Appeal Children’s Charity are needed.
The group was set up in 1999 as an independent charity by Pat Dillon, who was working as a Garda in Tipperary when he was introduced to children who were visiting from Belarus, getting a break from their contaminated environment.
“I didn’t mean to get involved. It just happened,” he says with a laugh.
Pat decided to set up the voluntary group because he and others wanted to help provide badly needed building and development projects in Belarus.
“We had a lot of men involved, so it seemed like a good idea to start providing facilities for kids,” adds Pat who is joined for our interview by fellow volunteer Declan Manning, and Pat’s adopted son 11-year-old, Greb, who was born in Belarus and became part of the Dillon family when he was 18 months old.
At present, the Sunflower Chernobyl Appeal is involved in some 15 schemes to assist children whose lives are still affected by Chernobyl as well as by the many social problems in Belarus.
Pat and several members of the group are just back from Belarus where they were preparing for volunteers who are going out there in May to complete a number of building projects. They were also organising visas for 25 children to visit Ireland.
The Sunflower Chernobyl group has built day-care centres in various parts of Belarus and is now putting the finishing touches to a centre for 170 children who have special needs in an area south of the country. It’s about 150 miles away from Chernobyl in a place designated as ‘medium contaminated’.
The group of volunteers will also be completing two houses located outside the walls of an orphanage in north east Belarus. Designed for special needs orphans, these are due to open in July.
Each house will accommodate six orphans aged from 19-28. At the moment, the orphanage houses 400 people aged between four and 28, all of them with special needs. But as they get older, they are destined for an adult mental institution unless – which is unlikely – they find somebody willing to adopt them. This new facility gives those orphans a far better option.
Pat has a folder of photos – some very upsetting – of teenage boys in cots in orphanages. He doesn’t want them printed; it wouldn’t be fair on the youngsters, he says. One of them, who is now 17 or 18, has been in the orphanage’s high dependency unit for years and is just lying there. Another is about 14, although his wasted body tells a different story – he looks like a five-year-old.
“We are hoping to put in a sensory room for these children,” says Pat and Declan adds that they also intend to renovate and brighten up the rooms of bed-ridden children.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
images/files/images/x3_Courthouse.jpg
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
