In the abandoned city of Pripyat, located within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, stands the former Hospital No. 126. The hospital was built in the 1970s when the city of Pripyat was developed to house workers of the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and their families.

Hospital No. 126 was the main medical facility for the city’s population of nearly 50,000 residents. The complex included several departments such as surgery, internal medicine, pediatrics, and a morgue located in the basement.

In the early hours of 26 April 1986, the role of the hospital changed dramatically. Following the explosion of reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the first injured victims were transported to the hospital. Many of them were firefighters and plant workers who had been involved in extinguishing the fires at the reactor site.

Doctors initially treated the patients for burns, nausea and exhaustion, but it soon became clear that many of them were suffering from acute radiation sickness due to extremely high levels of radiation exposure. At first, medical staff did not fully understand the severity of the radiation doses the victims had received.

As the situation worsened, the most severely affected patients were transferred to specialized hospitals in Moscow, where several of them died in the weeks following the disaster.

On 27 April 1986, about 36 hours after the explosion, the entire city of Pripyat was evacuated. Residents were told the evacuation would only be temporary, so most left their homes with very few personal belongings. The hospital was abandoned just as quickly as the rest of the city. Medical records, equipment and medicines remained inside the building.

The hospital’s basement contained the morgue where victims were temporarily placed before being transported to other medical facilities. After the evacuation, the building remained empty inside the restricted zone surrounding the nuclear power plant.