The Terrifying Nuclear Disaster You've Never Heard Of

hey 42 here on the 28th of September 1987 a woman marched into the Department of Health in the Brazilian city of goanna and dumped a Dusty old sack down on the nearest desk when the startled doctor sitting opposite asked what was going on the woman's answer was simple the contents of this bag are killing my family at first the doctor didn't believe her after all a not remotely ominous sack appeared to be full of random bits of scrap vessel but over the course of the following 24 hours he was forced to dramatically reassess that Hasty

conclusion because as it turns out the contents of that old sack weren't just killing the woman's family they were a very serious threat to the entire city this is the story of the goanna accident one of the worst nuclear disasters in history in 1985 a private radiotherapy clinic in the Brazilian city of Guyana moved across town into a newer swankier building the old premises were scheduled to be demolished but due to a last minute legal dispute some of the clinics Earth while treatment rooms were left partially intact as the months went by the gutted shell

of the building grew increasingly deric and rumors began to circulate that not all of the Clinic's medical equipment had made the jour Journey to the new premises you don't need to be Dr House's financial advisor to know that medical devices can be pretty pricey and it wasn't long before a couple of scavenger Hunters turned up looking to make a quick book their names were Roberto Alves and Vagner parida and on the 10th of September 1987 they spent several hours picking through the debris inside the old Clinic before one of them hit the jackpot this jackpot

was clearly a medical device though exactly what kind of medical device they had no idea still it was very large extremely heavy and most importantly of all it looked bloody expensive the machine was too bulky to take home in one piece so Alves and perir removed the priciest looking part a large a regularly shaped chunk of stainless steel and took it back to Alva's place in a wheelbarrow the the plan was to dismantle it and sell the parts for scrap but before they could begin both men started to feel unwell considering their symptoms sickness and

diarrhea they naturally assumed it was something they'd eaten but p in particular continued to deteriorate one of his hands swelled up and a strange rash appeared on the palm that almost looked like a burn understandably concerned he took himself to the local doctor but he was reassured that he'd had some kind of allergic reac reaction and prescribed a week's bed rest whilst perir put his feet up Al started trying to dismantle the device it proved to be incredibly difficult whatever the thing was it was built like a tank but over the course of 3 days

he managed it as he'd suspected inside he found plenty of valuable scrap metal including a surprisingly large amount of lead but it was the Curious aluminium cylinder hidden right at the very heart of the device that really caught his eye whatever the machine was this aluminium cylinder not much larger than an espresso cup seemed to be the thing that made it work the cylinder had a small glass window at one end Alva smashed it with a screwdriver and had a poke around inside to his disappointments the cylinder was filled with what looked like grains of

rice made of some kind of solid material that crumbled into powder at the slightest touch he had no idea what this substance was but so far as he could tell it was worthless the device was now completely dissembled and Alvis took it to a local scrapyard where he sold it as a Job Lot to the owner a man called the ver ferir after concluding the sale ferir dumped the hall in his garage for processing and forgot all about it but that very night whilst doing his round to the scrapyard he noticed something very strange the

pile of scrap he'd bought that morning was glowing on closer inspection F tracks the source of this strange blue light down to the chokey substance inside the aluminium cylinder as the owner of a scrapyard he was an expert on a wide variety of different materials but ferera had never seen anything like this strange glowing powder his best guess was that it was some kind of crushed up gemstone or failing that something Supernatural whatever it was it was eily fascinating and over the following 3 days he invited friends family and neighbors to come and admire the

mysterious substance for themselves he was even generous enough to allow several of them to take a small amount of the stuff home with them one such lucky recipient was his brother Ivo he took a few grains of the glowing substance home to show his daughter ler as Ivo had hoped ler was captivated by the mysterious substance especially when she realized she could paint it all over her skin so that she glowed like a fairy in a story book but her Joy wouldn't last long within minutes she was vomiting violently not far away in the Ferrera

household devar's wife Maria was feeling equally poorly like many people she knew she was suffering with a sickness bug of some kind and her symptoms eventually became so severe that she visited the local hospital as had been the case with vagna Pera 6 days earlier she was told she'd had some kind of allergic reaction and sent home to rest imagine walking into a massive Library full of really interesting books but there's a weird mysterious guy following you around and every time you open a book to read it he peers over your shoulder unsettling right well

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to get three months free don't miss out and a big thank you to expressvpn for sponsoring this video back at the scrapyard her husband dvar who was also feeling Gil had tasked two of his employees with further breaking down the scrap metal he'd bought from Roberto Alves when they were done dvar sold most of what was left to another scrapyard by this point remnants of the strange glowing powder and the Machine it had once been a part of were spread all across the city of ganna and in some cases far beyond but it would almost

certainly have spread much further were it not for the quick thinking of Maria Ferrara like everybody else she had no idea what the strange glowing material was but unlike everyone else she'd made a vital connection everyone that touched it had gotten sick knowing where all of this is going might not seem like much of an impressive mental leap but the protagonists of this story almost all came from poor backgrounds and had very limited education many were illiterate and likely didn't even know what radiation was let alone what the symptoms of radiation poisoning looked like Maria

had been told by a medical professional that she'd had a simple allergic reaction it must have taken a lot of courage to challenge that diagnosis especially when the alternative was so outlandish but Maria fera was convinced and so along with an employee from her husband's scrapyard called Geraldo D Silva she collected what remained of the glowing powder and everything else she could find that had come into contact with it then she and Geraldo hopped onto a crowded local bus I know yikes and headed for the offices of the G Department of Health and this is

where we Circle back to the scene at the start of this video Maria dumps the sack of scrap metal on the nearest desk and explained that its contents were killing her family after what I can only assume was a very awkward silence the doctor asked Maria a few questions how many people were ill what was wrong with them where the random crap on his desk came into it you know that sort of thing based on her answers he concluded that the mysterious sickness was likely nothing more than a nasty case of food poisoning or perhaps

some kind of tropical disease and so he sent Maria and deraldo to the nearest hospital for tropical diseases and got back to work but it seemed that something in Maria's story continued to naget him because later in this afternoon he removed a sack of scrap metal from his office and put it on a chair outside in the courtyard he was pretty sure it was harmless but his better to be safe and sorry and with that in mind once back at his desk he picked up the phone and placed a call Maria and Geraldo arrived at

the hospital for tropical diseases not long afterwards and it quickly became clear that Maria and her family weren't the only ones experiencing these unpleasant symptoms in fact it seemed that a kind of mini epidemic had broken out in ganna Maria even saw at least one familiar face vagna Pereira had been admitted to the same Clinic several days earlier when his own symptoms had continued to worsen as yet the cause of the strange illness was unknown but one young doctor was starting to develop a theory there was nothing remotely unusual about sickness and diarrhea common symptoms

of literally hundreds of ailments but many of the patients had accompanying skin complaints burn like lesions unusual swellings and skin discoloration the doctor had a feeling he knew what was was causing them but his theory was so utterly insane he was too embarrassed to share it with his colleagues instead he picked up the nearest phone and placed a call Dr Alonzo montio was a medical physicist specializing in both tropical diseases and toxicology and during the afternoon on the 28th of September 1987 he received two very unusual phone calls the first first was from a doctor

at the gonia Department of Health who claimed to have been given a mysterious sack of junk that was making people ill the second was from another Doctor Who suspected that the patient swamping his Clinic was suffering from radiation poisoning had Dr montio received just one of these phone calls he might have dismissed it as nonsense but to receive them both on the same day just hours apart well it was probably worth investigating and so he made a phone call of his own this one to the gonia state environment department where he requested that a scientist

be sent to test a sack of scrap metal for radioactivity at first the environment Department had a bit of trouble finding a suitable person for the job but as look would have it medical physicist Walter ferera happens to be on holiday nearby at the time he didn't have any of the necessary equipment with him to test a sack obviously but he had a few contacts as a local government agency involved in uranium prospecting and they agreed to lend him some gear he picked up a kind of radiation monitor called a skin Teter from their offices

in gonia the following morning then hopped in a cab to go and test a py of scrap metal whilst on routs he decided to familiarize himself with the borrow device but as soon as he switched it on it went haywire reading off the scale for harmful ionizing radiation in all directions assuming it was broken broken he asked the taxi driver to turn around and went back to get a new one this time he switched a replacement device on as soon as he stepped out of the building and exactly the same thing happened again it could

only mean one thing the devices weren't defective somewhere nearby was a massive source of ionizing radiation showing admirable bravery Walter fera didn't hesitate he headed straight for the goia Department of Health to investigate the mysterious sack for himself he knew he wouldn't actually be able to determine how radioactive it was with the skill toomer reading off the scale no matter where he pointed it it was essentially useless but Walter knew that this was already an incredibly dangerous situation and the only way to contain it was to understand exactly what was going on when he arrived

at the Department of Health he found several fire engines waiting outside it turned out that the doctor who'd spoken to Maria fera the day before had grown and so nervous about the sack he called the emergency services and asked them to dispose of it luckily Walter arrived before they got the chance because the gania fire department had been planning to dispose of the highly radioactive sack of scrap metal by dumping it into the nearby mayor Ponte River had that actually happened it would have caused an environmental catastrophe Walter called the fire brigade off and ordered

the immediate evacuation of the entire hospital he then set about trying to figure out exactly what he was dealing with and more importantly where the hell it had come from Walter managed to trace the site back to De fera scrapyard and from there back to the old abandoned radiotherapy clinic in the north of the city a few phone calls later he was able to confirm that somehow a radiotherapy machine had been left behind in the building when the clinic relocated 2 years earlier inside that machine there had been a single aluminium cylinder ER containing 993

G of Highly radioactive cesium chloride a cesium salt made with a radio isotope called cium 137 that was incredibly bad news these days cesium chloride is very rarely used in radiotherapy because it's so dangerous if the source is compromised cesium chloride salts are highly soluble in water and easily dispersed in the air in powder form if over word czm 137 is a nuclear disaster just waiting to happen Walter reported the findings and they were soon escalated to the very highest levels of Brazilian government within a matter of hours the situation in gonia had been labeled

a full-blown nuclear emergency priority number one was to deal with the highly radioactive remains of the dismantled radiotherapy device it was far too dangerous to move it in its current state so instead a cran was brought brought in to lower a large section of sewer pipe over the offending sack where it sat on a chair in the courtyard of the Department of Health that pipe was then filled with concrete The Wider response to the incident was huge with hundreds of Specialists flown in from all over Brazil teams of Geer counter wielding scientists assessed the known

contamination sites specially fitted cars cruised the streets seeking other source of contamination and the helicopter was brought into home the entire city from the sky neighborhoods where significant levels of radiation were detected were evacuated immediately and the nearby Olympic stadium was transformed into a giant testing center for those suspected of having come into contact with radioactive materials a lab was set up to test for contamination of the city's soil groundwater air food produce and river water and the movements of everyone known to have been contaminated were tra backwards in time uncovering several more contamination sites

across the city and in some cases far beyond once the team had determined how far the contamination had spread it was time to begin the cleanup Job 14 different areas of the city were found to have heightened levels of radioactivity as well as 85 separate residences where levels of radiation were relatively low pressure washers and specially designed vacuum cleaners were used but in many any cases that wasn't enough some buildings had to be demolished entirely and many of the families affected were forced to give up all of their possessions because they simply weren't safe to

handle in total 3,500 cubic meters of seesi and contaminated nuclear waste was removed from the city enough to fill 275 lorries it was taken to a remote location 15 Mi outside of the city and buried over the course of the following few weeks over 100,000 people were tested at the Olympic Stadium more than a thousand of them were found to have been contaminated of those 249 had significant levels of radioactive material either on or in some cases in their bodies and the further 20 people were so radioactive that their urine and feces had to be

disposed of as nuclear waste thankfully the vast majority of those affected survived with little to know long-term effects but not everyone was so lucky of the Scavengers who originally uncovered the radiotherapy device ragner perir lost a finger on one hand and several others were badly disfigured whilst Roberto Alves lost his entire right forearm deraldo D Silva the scrapyard employee who took the radioactive materials to the Department of Health with Maria fera developed a huge radiation burn on his back where he carried the sack this kind of skin damage was common amongst those who directly handled

the cesium salts and many people needed skin graphs at the very heart of this story are the four people who tragically lost their lives due to acute radiation poisoning ler ferrira daughter of IO ferrira died on the 23rd of October 1987 four weeks after doring the highly radioactive czm 137 all over her body she also ingested a significant quantity of the powder along with a sandwich she ate whilst playing with it she was just 6 years old when she died and the final weeks of her life were unspeakably terrible Maria fera lia's aunt and the

woman who first made the connection between the glowing powder and the widespread sickness died on the same day as her niece in the final weeks of her life she suffered hair loss internal bleeding and mental confusion the other two victims admir son dza and Israel dos Santos were employees at the V fera scrapyard aged 18 and 22 respectively both had spent significant time working with the radioactive scrap metal they died a day apart at the end of October 1987 after a great deal of suffering the human cost of the gonia incident was incredibly high but

the impact of what is now considered one of the worst nuclear disasters and history went much deeper than that the incident was front page news in Brazil that was to be expected but what nobody anticipated was the reaction of the general public it's worth remembering that all of this happened just a year after the shabal disaster so fear surrounding nuclear incidents was just an all-time high residents of the city of GNA suffered widespread prejudice and discrimination from people who feared that even going near them might be dangerous Pilots refused to fly them bus drivers wouldn't

pick them up and they were denied housing in other towns and cities businesses refused to buy goods made in GNA and dozens of companies large and small went bankrupt as sales plummeted the government began issuing certificates to people who were confirmed to be free of contamination but if anything that only made it worse a prime example of how bad things got came at ler F's funeral she was laid to rest in a public Cemetery but her remains were so radioactive that she was buried in a specially built fiberglass coffin lined with lead despite these measures

the funeral attracted over 2,000 protesters who attempted to physically prevent the burial from taking place because they were afraid Leer's body would contaminate the surrounding land the gona incident remains one of the worst nuclear disasters in history and the sad truth is that it could so easily have been prevented you see it turns out that the owners of the abandoned radiotherapy clinic in GNA hadn't forgotten about that old machine after all just four months before Alves and Pereira discovered it one of the owners of the clinic went to try and remove the device due to

the ongoing legal dispute between his company and the owners of the old site he was prevented from recovering the machine when he tried to insist someone called the police and he was forcibly removed from the site ultimately the story of the Gia incident is one of tragedy and loss it's also an eye-opening reminder of just how much chaos and Devastation can be wrought by a few handfuls of innocuous looking white powder thanks for watching just a quick word to say that I couldn't make these videos without the support of my patreon members consider joining the

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