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Journalist Y. Snegirev tells his story
Written by Юрий Снегирев   
Вторник, 29 Октябрь 2002
“SHE'S ALIVE!”
In Komsomolskaya Pravda
 
In front of our correspondent a young woman hostage, considered dead, came to life
 
It is an hour before the assault. Along Volgograd Prospect the ambulances wait. Sixty vehicles. Their drivers are smoking, and the orderlies doze in the cabins. The first explosions from inside the complex are not audible out here, but in five minutes the radio orders everyone to move out to the scene of the tragedy. I am assigned to the crew as a volunteer.
 
The column has not even driven all the way to ‘Nord-Ost’ when the back doors are flung open and rescuers carry in a young girl on a blanket. She is the first of the casualties. There is not a scratch on her, but she tosses around in semi-consciousness. “I’m cold,” is the all she manages to say. The ambulance rushes to the ‘Sklif’. “Blood pressure almost nil,” cries the medic. “It’s a concussion. Hurry up!”
Then the girl wakes up: “My name is Natasha Glukhova, where am I?”
“You are safe in an ambulance,” says the medic. “Who was with you?”
“My daughter, Anzhelika.”
“Do you remember your relatives’ phone number?”
“I remember, but where am I?”
Natasha absolutely cannot remember where she spent the last three nightmarish days. It was if her memory had been cut. Is it a result of the explosion?
We arrive at ‘Sklif’. While doctors go and negotiate a place, I try to talk with Natasha. I began to rub her hands. I thought they were blue, but her hands are warm — it is just dirt from her three days of captivity. I call the phone number that I get out of Natasha with difficulty. At the other end of the line there is wailing: Aunt Ira had already given up Natasha Glukhova and her daughter, Anzhelika, for dead. Natasha’s husband, Sergei, is airborne. He is immediately flying back to Moscow after a business trip.
 
“There was no explosion,” says Natasha. “I just fell asleep. I’m messed up, and my head hurts…” The stretcher-bearers pull up. I manage to tell her relatives where Natasha has been put. “Find her daughter,” they already beg.
 
Another trip. They carry the next victim right onto the street. No time to turn, so we switch on the flashers. The stream of cars instantly brakes, and the drivers understand who we are and where we are going. With Svetlana Afanasyeva it is the same picture: she poorly remembers what happened. Low blood pressure, and slow reaction time. In route she is able to say that she fell asleep in her chair. Her girlfriend was sitting next to her, but she cannot remember what her girlfriend’s name is. It is like a fog. Later it is explained: sleeping gas was released into the auditorium. The symptoms are from it.
 
On the second trip the Sklifosovsky Institute has come to life. The security guard shows up, and duty physicians pour out onto the ramp. Ambulances start coming at intervals of a minute. There are also traffic jams. From the vehicle in front of us seven people get out all at once. They are on their feet, but it as if they are in slow motion. A young guy walks as if stunned, leading his giggling companion toward the park instead of the admissions office. The somnambulists are caught by the orderlies and sent to the hospital. Obvious intoxication.
 
By our third trip the toxicology department is packed. They start sending people to therapy. “And still not a single injury,” says a Sklifosovsky orderly thoughtfully.
 
“No, there was one fat guy,” a young paramedic butts in. “He cut his foot on some glass. But he was also one sleepy fly.”
 
The ‘Sklif’ has never seen such a sight before. All the victims of the terrorist attack were toppling to the ground: not from their wounds, but from some unknown gas.
 
“We don't know what it is,” the doctor on duty tells me, taking me for an ambulance paramedic. “But the tests will tell us.”
 
I manage to talk with the SOBR rapid reaction commandos. They referred to non-lethal weapons that are used to avoid massive casualties. Specifically, to a gas known as ‘Bell’. This classified substance has never before been applied on such a large scale. The action is well known, but the consequences are still poorly understood. The doctors all say that the affected will be on their feet in a couple of days, but as to whether they will they remember what happened to them, that remains a question.
 
In line at the Sklifosovsky, among the ambulances stand two buses. Orderlies with gurneys immediately line up by them. Partially dressed young men and women are taken into admissions. They shake their heads and rave. When the unloading is finished, the buses pull up to another door, a black metal one. I stand opposite it and see bodies piled in the aisle of the coach. No need for stretchers. The orderlies grab the dead by the hands and feet and carry them to a special room. A police barricade is set up around the buses. I am inside the cordon and try to photograph the unloading of the bodies. Before my eyes a young woman believed to be dead shakes her head. There is a yell: “Yes, she’s alive!” An orderly crosses himself.
 
The woman is immediately laid on a gurney and taken to the emergency room. It is not to be ruled out that she is an isolated case among those written off as dead.
 
 
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