Location: Myllypuro In Helsinki  (FINLAND)

N60°13.12'

E025°04.34'

Toxic Suburb Of Alakiventie, Picture 1- Seems like an idyllic place when you walk around here. The superficial look however can fool you, because you cannot see what lies underground. There, buried under the earth, lies the old dumb pit that was closed in 1962.

- Only a little over ten years from closing the dumb pit, city decided to build apartment houses on top of the old dumb pit. Either there were no test made to the soil, to determined if it's toxic or not, or either someone was bribed to keep quiet about possible problems. In either way, the shortage on houses was a real one and so the officials happily started to build apartment houses for families, in 1974.

- All through the eighties and nineties, the ground kept on moving under the houses, causing a constant need to repair drainpipes, yard plates and the houses. Finally in 1998, the shareholders got tired of paying the constant repair work and demanded to see what was wrong in the ground under the apartment houses. When the excavator removed soil a little deeper (over 1 meter), the stench that came out from the hole didn't leave no place to the imagination...

- I've read some really sad stories about families that used to have homes here. One family bought their own apartment from here, in the spring of 1998 and they were told from the environment office, that there is nothing wrong with the place. Then after a year from that, city decided to demolish all of the houses because the ground is toxic. This is not a fun place at all. People lost their moneys here and homes. Homes where some of them had lived from the seventies. This is not a sad place in the same sense as some old hospitals. This place has more like a "modern" sad feeling, because these problems that came true for this suburb, concern mostly of our modern society, where everybody wants to make a profit. To me it's astonishing, that city didn't want to pay a decent sum of money from peoples homes. Most of the families that lived here, got so little sum from their home, that they couldn't buy a new home without taking another loan. Loan that they perhaps just had gotten paid back to the bank...

- Some of the houses are already demolished and these few that still stands here will be gone pretty soon. I've visited this place several times, looking around for a way into the buildings, but so far it has been an impossible task, because every hole, door and window is sealed and boarded carefully.

- I said so far... This time Lady Luck was walking around there also and showed me a way in, just like I have wished for so long. But like the saying goes, be careful what you wish, because the trip inside of the house was a bit too exciting for me. You'll see what I mean...

 

Toxic Suburb Of Alakiventie, Picture 2

 

"Demolition work. No admittance for irrelevant people"

- Irrelevant...so that means like what? I have something to do here. I want to take pictures, so this doesn't concern me? Right? If I was just hanging around here, it would be a pretty irrelevant?

Toxic Suburb Of Alakiventie, Picture 3

 

Toxic Suburb Of Alakiventie, Picture 4

 

Toxic Suburb Of Alakiventie, Picture 5

 

 

 

 

 

- No more children's laughter and games. Hopefully the statistics are not correct, that people that used to live here, had a higher cancer rating than other people.

Toxic Suburb Of Alakiventie, Picture 6

 

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