Chernobyl Journal #8: Pripyat Hospital

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 | decay, hdr, project wormwood, travel journal, video

This is part eight of my travel photo journal to the Chernobyl zone of exclusion. Check out the Chernobyl Journal page for the full story, all pictures, videos and sounds.

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We spent most of the rest of the day in Pripyat’s north-east. The old Pripyat hospital was one of the biggest and most rewarding locations we visited. It consisted of five large buildings, about 6 stories high, all interconnected. The layout was rectangular so that one large corridor with rooms to each side lead through the whole length, flanked by two staircases at the side. In the middle of the buildings were open entrance areas, which seemed to have been used as common rooms or receptions. Almost every room was filled with medical equipment, from beds, cupboards, medicine bottles, autoclaves to whole operation rooms.

Visiting abandoned hospitals, hotels, schools or office complexes is very different from visiting abandoned factories. While factories’ layouts are vast and irregular, hospitals, schools, and such have similar layouts on every floor. Every floor however has certain differences - some subtle, such as different shades of corridor colors - some extreme, such as one floor being clean and empty while the one above is flooded or burned. Moving from floor to floor feels like moving through alternate realities, histories or personalities of the same space. There is also something unsettling, remotely nightmarish about the repetitiveness and drawn-out perspective of long corridors, which speaks a strange dialect of claustrophobia.

Maternity Ward

One of the areas in the hospital I spent a lot of time in was the maternity ward. The rusty-white baby cribs standing in a paint-shedding room under observation of two lonely chairs were a sight both sad and peaceful, as opposed to the twisted ob/gyn chair in the room next to them (somebody had even put one of the chairs outside in front of the entrance, which felt artificial and unnecessary). Other floors were largely flooded and still icy from the cold temperatures. Another interesting hospital area was the clinic behind the main building. Each window bore a different symbol related to science - physics, chemistry, biology, botanics, through which the sun shone and cast interesting shadows on the floor.

After a while of wandering around the hospital, René called me and offered me a great view from the roof. I went up to the top floor, climbed up the rusty ladder, and found René and Laura at the other end of the roof - celebrating the zone with a champagne bottle. During their stay, the two must have climbed on eight or more Pripyat roofs - a record possibly broken only by looters. I couldn’t refuse a sip, and drinking champagne on an abandoned hospital roof with the Chernobyl reactor visible on the horizon became one of the bizarre highlights of the trip.

Photo Album: Pripyat Hospital