Shortly after the accident, firefighters arrived to try to e

Shortly after the accident, firefighters arrived to try to extinguish the fires

The immediate priority was to extinguish fires on the roof ad1865 of the station and the area around the building containing Reactor No. 4 to protect No. 3 and keep its core cooling systems intact. The fires G4PH50U were extinguished by 5:00, but many firefighters received high doses of radiation. The fire inside reactor 4 continued to burn until 10 May 1986; 2SK3568 it is possible that well over half of the graphite burned out. The fire was extinguished by a combined effort of helicopters dropping over 5,000 metric tons of sand, lead, clay, and 2sk2596 neutron absorbing boron onto the burning reactor and injection of liquid nitrogen. The Ukrainian filmmaker Vladimir Shevchenko captured film footage of an Mi-8 helicopter as it collided with a nearby construction U893B crane, causing the helicopter to fall near the damaged reactor building and killing its four-man crew. It is now known that virtually none of the neutron absorber reached the core.