Chernobyl
A doll rests on a bunk bed in an abandoned nursery school abandoned since 1986 in Kopachi Village in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The school is one of the few remaining structures from the village that was torn down and buried after being contaminated by fallout from the Chernobyl disaster.
An abandoned home sits along an overgrown street inside Chernobyl's exclusion zone, an area of 30 kilometers around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster of April 26, 1986.
The remains of an abandoned nursery school in Kopachi Village.
A magazine lays on a floor covered in items left behind in an abandoned home inside of Chernobyl's exclusion zone.
Chernobyl's reactor No. 4, which exploded on April 26, 1986, creating the worst nuclear power plant accident in history.
The site of the former Red Forest, a forest surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant which received its name from the ginger-brown color of the trees after they absorbed high levels of radiation from the nuclear accident in 1986. In the cleanup after the disaster the Red Forest was bulldozed and buried, yet the area remains one of the most contaminated areas in the world today.
A ferris wheel stands tall above the overgrown brush in Pripyat. The Pripyat amusement park was scheduled to officially open May 1, 1986, but was left abandoned after the Chernobyl disaster.
An abandoned home inside Chernobyl's exclusion zone.
Misha Tefflenko, 25, a government tour guide, who lives in Chernobyl, (staying 15 days inside the town and 15 days outside), is reflected in the window of an abandoned nursery school in Kopachi Village.
A doll lays in the leaves inside of Chernobyl's exclusion zone.
An abandoned home inside of the exclusion zone.
Tourists take a photo of themselves in front of the Pripyat sign inside of the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
An abandoned supermarket in Pripyat. The city was once the home to nearly 50,000 people before it was evacuated several days after the Chernobyl disaster.
An indoor swimming pool in Pripyat. The pool, known as Azure, is one of three indoor swimming pools in Pripyat, but is the most well-known since it was featured in the video game "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare." The pool was used by workers for nearly a decade after the disaster at Chernobyl.
A calendar hangs on a wall inside of an apartment building in Pripyat.
The living room of an apartment inside of an apartment building in Pripyat.
An
apartment in Pripyat.
A doll lays on a bunk bed in an abandoned nursery school in Kopachi Village in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
Cabinets sit empty in an abandoned home along an overgrown street inside Chernobyl's exclusion zone.
The abandoned nursery school in Kopachi Village.
A handwritten book sits in an abandoned village inside of the exclusion zone.
Bumper cars sit in the overgrown weeds and brush in Pripyat's amusement park.
A building sits quiet along the former town center of Pripyat.
A man walks through the Woodworm Star Memorial in Chernobyl that shows the names of the two towns and 184 villages that were evacuated because of the radiation fallout from the disaster at Chernobyl in 1986.
To find out more about Chernobyl read Betsy Hiel's reporting in the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.