As a “purple cone of iridescent flame” (91) leaps 150 meters out of Chernobyl’s Unit Four, the 14 men on watch at Paramilitary Fire Station Number Two hear the alarm sound. Shift commander Lieutenant Vladimir Pravik calls in a three-alarm fire which summons every fire brigade in the Kiev area.

Back at Chernobyl, unaware that the reactor core’s obliterated, Dyatlov instructs two trainees, Viktor Proskuryakov and Alexander Kudryavstev, to attempt to lower the control rods by hand. He proceeds to instruct Akimov to find some way to get water into the reactor. Yuri Tregob, a reactor control engineer from an earlier shift who stays behind for the test, receives instruction to turn on the emergency coolant system by hand in order to flood the reactor.

Meanwhile, a dazed Yuvchenko runs into Tregob and decides to accompany him in his attempt to turn on the coolant system, a two-man job. They make their way to the reactor hall to find everything in ruins, the roof and most of the walls obliterated and the wreckage lit by moonlight. “Alexander Yuvchenko could see something more frightening still: a shimmering pillar of ethereal blue-white light, reaching straight up into the night sky, disappearing into infinity” (94).