Survivors cram board room with tales of radiation fallout

By JIM SECKLER

KINGMAN - More than a hundred people jammed into the county Board of Supervisors meeting room Friday to tearfully relate stories of the deaths of loved ones from nuclear testing in Nevada.

Robert Cope, program manager at the Arizona Radiation Regulatory Agency in Phoenix heard story after story of nieces, nephews, uncles and aunts who succumbed to various cancers after being exposed to nuclear radiation fallout.

Jan. 27 was the 54th anniversary of the beginning of the nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada test site during the 1950s and 1960s.

Vigils have been held by "downwinders" throughout the country since 1976, according to Eleanore Fanire, co-founder of Mohave Downwinders, an advocacy group for victims in Mohave County.

Fanire, who grew up in Kingman, said many families living in Bullhead City and Needles as well as in Kingman during the 1950s were affected from the nuclear fallout.

Like dozens of others, June Gransoldati spoke Friday of her niece Kelly Tutch, a nurse at the Kingman Regional Medical Center who died last year from cancer at the age of 48.

Cope will take the testimonies back to a panel of the National Academy of Science in Washington, D.C.

In March, the NAS and the Department of Justice will decide which of 20 counties in five Western states will be added in the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.

Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990 but did not include all the residents of the Mohave County from seeking compensation for being exposed to the nuclear radiation.

In November 2003, the Mohave County Board of Supervisors drafted a resolution to Congress to include victims living in the entire county.

The Department of Justice, which carries out the compensation program, stated that residents in the Arizona Strip or north of the Grand Canyon are included in the program but residents living south of the Grand Canyon are not.

One theory why most of the county was excluded from the compensation act may be because of a mix up in the spelling of Mohave versus Mojave.

After World War II, the United States exploded nuclear weapons above ground during the 1950s at the Nevada test site and after a treaty with the former Soviet Union in the early 1960s conducted nuclear tests underground.

The radiation fallout from the above ground testing blanketed residents of southeastern Nevada, Northwest Arizona and southern Utah.

Radiation waste and rocket fuel additives have also found their way into the Colorado River, which some consider the country's most threatened river.

The 1990 law created a $100 million fund to compensate victims who lived downwind from the test. An amendment later removed the $100 million ceiling so test site workers could share in the compensation.

Those who can claim compensation are uranium miners, uranium millers, ore transporters, onsite participants and downwinders, or those who lived down wind from the test site.

All or parts of five other Arizona counties, Yavapai, Coconino, Gila, Apache and Navajo counties are included in the program. Only the northern section of Clark County in Nevada is covered.

The 1990 act grants payments of $50,000 for downwinders who were physically present down wind from the test site, the DOJ report stated.

Currently, the downwinders must have lived or worked in the Arizona counties from 1951 to 1958 or during June and July of 1962 to qualify for compensation, the DOJ report states.

Specific diseases include leukemia, lung cancer, multiple myeloma, and thyroid, breast, stomach and other cancers.

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