Trinity Site downwinders keep up the fight

[TexasTowelie]

An obelisk made of black lava marks Trinity Site ground zero, where the first atomic bomb was detonated at 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945. The site will be open to the public Saturday. (Richard Pipes/Albuquerque Journal)

Before she died, Annie Chavez told her children the story of how 70 years ago it snowed in July, how the walls of the family home in Capitan crumbled and the floors rocked and the sun rose with a crack into the dark, predawn skies from the West, not the East. And how scared she was.

It was, she thought, the end of the world.

“Mom stumbled to her feet and started yelling at us to get our rosaries. She yelled for us to pray that our sins be forgiven and that we go to God,” Chavez told them. “Then my mom said, ‘See, it’s Jesus, in the cloud,’ and when I looked out the door there was the brightest cloud I’d ever seen.”

They didn’t go to God that day, much to the eternal despair of Chavez’s mother, and it was not until years later they learned that what they had seen and felt that early morning of July 16, 1945, was the detonation of the first atomic bomb on a desolate stretch of the Jornada del Muerto desert at a spot called Trinity Site, about 50 miles west of Capitan.

Read more: http://www.abqjournal.com/651318/news/trinity-site-downwinders-keep-up-the-fight.html

[enough]

1. "never understood why no one had warned them"

A good question. Either it was an absolute lack of concern for the humans in the area, or worse, a human experiment.

snip from the article>

“We can gather a lot of interest and support, but until Washington hears us, until people of power listen, this remains a moral and ethical dilemma that needs attention,” she said.

For many, she knows, it is already too late.

“The generation before me is almost completely wiped out,” she said. “The generation I’m a part of is scared sick.”

Annie Chavez is gone, dead of stomach cancer in 1992, a week after turning 60. Her sister also died of cancer. In her earlier years, Chavez had five miscarriages. Her children said she never got over the morning it snowed in July, never understood why no one had warned them, never slept at night without a light.

“Damn idiots,” she told her children. “Didn’t even have the courage to tell us before they did it.”

end>

[womanofthehills]

4. It's horrible that they warned none of the ranchers

Many of the scientists also died of cancer because they were ignorant of all the dangers of plutonium - dumping plutonium in the hills around Los Alamos. Every time it rains in northern NM, plutonium runs into the Rio Grande. There were 4 observation points for the scientists -3 of them were only 5 1/2 miles from Ground Zero. Many years ago, I met a scientist who watched the blast and he told me he was the only one left alive who watched from that close distance. We were soaking in the hot springs at Ojo Calliente and he believed he was still alive because he soaked all the time.

[DhhD]

2. Old dose information and tests conducted in early years of the Nuclear Age.

http://www.abomb1.org/atmosphr/ustests.html

[DhhD]

3. Today October 17, 2015, I find the web page has been wipped completely off. I go there,

from time to time, to study the atomic information and dosing information. It was very unique. And the dose information on that document is very telling. If anybody happened to have saved it, can you send me a DU email private message and provide me with a bit copy? Thanks.