On July 25 they received an answer: that morning, the first busloads of Pripyat evacuees set out to return to their city—but only as part of an official program to reclaim what they could from their apartments and seek compensation for what they could not. Arriving at a checkpoint on the perimeter of the thirty-kilometer Exclusion Zone, they were issued cotton overalls, shoe covers, petal respirators, and thick polyethylene bags. After a document check at the entrance to Pripyat, they were permitted to spend three or four hours in their abandoned apartments and walking the streets of the city,
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