KIISA, Estonia -- Children no longer play behind the picket fence around the yellow house at 4 Manni Lane. Police shot the family dogs.


After receiving massive doses of radiation from a piece of cesium found inside the home, one former resident is dead and others are hospitalized.


But the next-door neighbors still live in their house just 10 meters away, frightened and confused.


"This is our Chernobyl," says Kaie Nurk, 35. "Like at Chernobyl, we're being told there's no danger. But it's only later that everyone starts dying, isn't it?"


When the radioactive cylinder was found in this village 35 kilometers from Estonia's capital Tallinn, officials blamed recently withdrawn Russian troops.


Estonia now concedes its own lax storage procedures were at fault in the worst nuclear scare here since a cloud from the blast at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant passed over the nation in 1986.


The metal in Kiisa most likely came from the nearby Saku Nuclear Waste Facility, a run-down installation circled by a flimsy fence and rusty signs that read: "Radioactivity! Prohibited Area!"


Police say Riho Hiiob, who lived at 4 Manni Lane, probably hopped the wire fence and pocketed a small, shiny piece of cesium 137, which he apparently intended to hawk on the black market.


It eventually ended up in his kitchen cupboard. Authorities are not sure how long the deadly metal was in the house.


When rescuers in lead-lined suits and gas masks finally descended on the kitchen Nov. 10, radiation levels were 130 roentgens, 50 million times higher than normal background radiation.


Estonian health officials have expressed shock at the apparent ease with which a civilian got hold of the cesium 137, which is used in chemotherapy.


"Nobody can claim for sure that there are no other sources of danger lying around Estonia right now," said Jaan Saar, a radiation specialist at the Environment Ministry.


The government wants to take away control of nuclear waste from regional authorities. Extra guards have been posted at the Saku facility, and the government is studying other measures.


In the meantime, the stray piece of cesium has already taken its toll.


On Nov. 2, Riho Hiiob died from radiation poisoning. An autopsy showed he had accumulated some 1,500 roentgens of radiation, far beyond lethal doses.


Hiiob's girlfriend and her son also lived in the house and are still hospitalized with radiation sickness.


"Even at Chernobyl, people didn't get burns so serious as this boy," said Peeter Mardna, a doctor treating the the son, Rain Tubli, 14.


Around 100 people in Kiisa, which has a population of 350, have also had medical checkups. None has signs of illness, but experts say health damage from radiation may not show up for years.


The family at 2 Manni Lane regularly visited their neighbors.


Kaie Nurk's husband suffers from headaches and fatigue. Throwing an anxious glance at her daughter, Kaie Nurk conjures up potential dangers.


"Who's to say her children won't be born with deformities as a result of all this?" she said. "And if not her children, then maybe her children's children."