There were 1,225 buses in all, painted in a kaleidoscope of colors, representing more than a dozen different Soviet transport enterprises: some red, some yellow, some green, and some blue; some half red, half white; others with a stripe—plus 250 trucks and other vehicles in support, including ambulances from the civil defense, repair trucks, and fuel tankers. At 2:00 p.m., a full day and a half after the pall of radionuclides had first begun drifting into the atmosphere, the motley caravan of vehicles waiting at the Pripyat city limits at last began to move.
