By 'Yevnedelny Zhurnal' (Weekly Journal) 22.10.2003

A 'ChP' (Emergency Situation) LIVE ON THE AIR

Lyudmila Stebenkova, Moscow city council member:

We talked with a policeman who was there, and we asked him what had happened. He said: «Well, they started taking everyone out, and I saw that one person was getting into an ambulance, but the others had nowhere to go. So I said for the boys to put them on the bus.» We asked where they sent them all, and he said: «To Hospital #13, I don't know any others.»

Savik Shuster of NTV's 'Freedom of Speech':

We still cannot grasp in full the scale of 'Nord-Ost'. Certainly, this was a September 11th for Moscow. Our world order and world outlook changed. But September 11th did not break the US, as far as freedom of speech, though it changed all its external, internal, and economic policies. In Russia only constitutional values were trampled.

After these two tragedies we are traveling in different directions — civilizational and religious. This is obvious in Iraq, Israel, and Chechnya. You cannot move forward guided by the principle of «an eye for an eye». Certainly, we do not wish for the onslaught of a new Middle Ages, but a new Renaissance, and it takes personalities to do this. Leaders, however, play at populism and appeal to the lowest instincts of society. As a result we get what we get: the life of a plebian slave. To expect the situation to change on its own is impossible.

I can speak from the point of view of someone who was inside when the rescuers went in. Unfortunately, no one warned us what we would see in there. We only knew that there were many casualties. No one said anything about gas having been used there, or the need to bring individual protective devices with us. We had to evaluate the condition of the victims on our own. It became clear that we had to evacuate people out into the fresh air as quickly as possible, and to use antidotes to bring them out of their condition.

There was no one in charge inside to tell us where to carry the hostages, where sorting (triage — ed.) was to take place, and into what vehicles we needed to place the casualties. As a matter of fact, there were not enough vehicles at times. It was unclear what to do with the people we had carried outside: whether to stay with them so that they did not roll over into incorrect positions (for respiration), or to go back inside. Naturally, we made sure that their position was correct and we went back, because at the beginning there was nowhere to load them. I did not observe, unfortunately, if anyone was directing the file of ambulances. There was no organization to the loading, but I did not see how the people carried on the buses were unloaded.

I can tell you that I was a person who dragged. Had they told me that told me that we needed to bring some travois or stretchers then we could have worked faster and more effectively, but we went in there empty-handed. Whoever had vehicles nearby and could drive up a little closer, those boys had stretchers. We had them, but no one told me that we had to bring them with. No one told me that we needed medicines, especially specific ones. We had to figure out this on our own. We took the responsibility upon ourselves and guessed.