|
Bennington Banner Author tells Cambridge students
about nuclear fallout that hit area Saturday, March 19, 2005
- CAMBRIDGE, N.Y. -- Some 60 Cambridge Central School high school
science students were given the opportunity Tuesday morning to delve
into the mind behind one of their required-reading assignments on a
topic "a lot worse than Chernobyl," according to its author.
"They decided the risk to the American public without
consulting the American public," said author Bill Heller. Heller, a sports journalist by trade, authored the 2003 book
"A Good Day Has No Rain" after 17 years of trying to get the story of
how nuclear fallout from a 1950s above-ground atomic bomb testing
rained down over the Capital Region during a freak thunderstorm and how
the harmful details were kept classified for years. The Nevada testing could have been done underground, said
Heller, but the government wanted to simulate war conditions. The jet
stream took over after the explosion, which Heller said was bigger than
planned, carrying nuclear waste across the country until it was caught
up in a storm front over New York state. Students from chemistry and advanced placement environmental
sciences classes gathered in the gym for over an hour and a half to
hear Heller tell of the events of April 25, 1953 - and how it could
still be affecting the area. "Could you do a movie, like 'Fahrenheit 911' or 'Supersize
Me'?" a student asked Heller. Heller seemed pleased at the idea, saying, "It would be a
great documentary movie. We tend to forget the human side in all of
this. That's a great idea." He later added, "It's not an easy read, and a movie would
reach more people." What worries Heller the most, he told his youthful audience,
is a fact that he has only recently heard - the government wants to
reopen the original Nevada test site again. "Are you doing anything to prevent the reopening of the Nevada
test site?" a student asked Heller. "I'm speaking to a group of Cambridge Central School
students...." Heller said. Heller, 51, passed the obligation onto his audience, saying
they themselves could write to their members of congress because "It's
your country, too." Students asked why no one questioned the fallout at the time
that it happened, and Heller replied that some did, but that "if you
hear it enough times from the government that it's not true, it's
discouraging." Heller was inspired to write the book after reading in a
magazine article that Troy had one of the highest fallout rates in the
nation, and speaking with a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor
who guided him toward uncovering the story behind the facts. He
described what information he was able to gather initially as
"extremely difficult" to get until some of a government report on the
effects of the bomb testing became declassified years later during the
Clinton era. A student asked Heller, "What is the message that you would
hope people would gain from reading the book?" "I wanted people to know the truth," Heller told the students.
"Part of the message was that everyone that was put at risk should have
known." Heller lives in Albany, and has written 18 books - 17 of which
are sports-related. He currently writes about horses for a newspaper
and national horse magazines. "A Good Day Has No Rain" is dedicated to
RPI professor Herbert Clark, who helped Heller with the technical
difficulties of a topic he knew nothing about before he began to
research it. E-mail Jessica York at jyork@benningtonbanner.com. *
(Posted for educational and research
purposes only, in accordance |