"We are concerned about our future.
We are concerned about our humanlife."More News from the Front/Los Alamos Fire
From: "David Crockett Williams" <gear2000@lightspeed.net>
Today again I spoke to Reverend Yamato on the phone from New Mexico about the Global Peace Walk plans concerning what he feels is a Global Emergency Situation resulting from the fire that has ravaged the Los Alamos area including outlying areas of the Nuclear Weapons Lab reportedly aerosolizing in the smoke decades of radioactive contamination from areas surrounding the Lab, smoke now settling as potentially very dangerous ash over several States so far and moving eastward. (details/evidence on this point below)
Yamato has asked me to sound a Global Emergency Alert on this matter to call on supporters everywhere to take media publicity actions to get the facts known to ameliorate potential present dangers, to prevent any future such dangerous nuclear radioactivity threat situations, and to focus the current national and global public attention on this tragedy toward increasing public support and activism for the global abolition of nuclear weapons.
Please forward this post to your lists.
Tomorrow, Sunday, May 14th, Mother's Day (originally called Mothers Day for Peace) Reverend Yamato (zen buddhist monk and initiator of the Global Peace Walk project) will be conducting a global peace prayer and healing ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Hall in Angelfire near Eagle's Nest, New Mexico, caravaning there from Kit Carson Park in Taos, New Mexico, after gathering at 9AM.
In the afternoon, the Global Peace Walkers and support kitchen bus and shuttle vehicles will be going to the Los Alamos area, in spite of reported dangers mentioned above and evidenced below, to offer their help in anyway possible to the community ravaged by fire and, if needed, in firefighting efforts. Please keep them in your prayers. Depending on how long their help may be of value there, the walk's next schedule of May 29th ceremony at the Oklahoma City National (bombing victims') Memorial may be postponed. This Mother's Day ceremony is in solidarity with the prayer gathering being held this weekend near the Nevada Nuclear Test Site in support of Western Shoshone Spiritual Leader Corbin Harney and efforts to abolish nuclear power, testing and weapons globally, stop uranium mining and waste contaminations especially such as the proposed Yucca Mountain, NV, nuclear waste repository http://www.shundahai.org
Yamato specifically asked for all those dedicated to the cause of Nuclear Abolition 2000 to write letters with their messages about the dangers of nuclear weapons and their production's contamination of the land, and send these letters of support to their local media and to the Global Peace Walk to distribute to New Mexico and the national/international media on site in Los Alamos to address the need for Abolition 2000.Closing the weapons lab after this fire would be another idea.
Such letters/messages may be emailed (asap) to gear2000@lightspeed.net for forwarding to the walk, and/or signed copies (on letterhead if available) faxed to 561-658-2735.
He feels strongly that this situation at Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Lab now has the national and international media attention which should be utilized quickly by the Abolition 2000 network to inspire public support for ending the danger of nuclear weapons. He feels that it is not just a "coincidence" that the Global Peace Walk is now in a position to help facilitate this by being on site in Los Alamos starting tomorrow afternoon for, if necessary, an extended period of time. If you have not already, you may join the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons (in response to whose call for such cross-country peace walk this year Reverend Yamato is conducting Global Peace Walk 2000) at http://www.abolition2000.org
An easy way to email your letters to your local or Statewide media all in one email send, is via the Media Guide at http://congress.nw.dc.us/wnd (also same for government leaders indexed at that site by your zip code)
Excerpts of recent emails received discussing the radioactivity danger in the smoke from the Los Alamos fire (don't expect to see this in your media unless they are pressured by you since from history we know that the US and DOE will try to keep this kind of information from the public as long as possible to "avoid panic" -- and outrage)
Remember, one microgram of plutonium can be lethal if inhaled.
I leave it to your best judgement and hope the fears are overblown but "better to be safe than sorry", etc.
One thing I do feel fairly sure about from past history of US/DOE on reporting nuclear accidents/dangers, if there is a radioactivity danger in the smoke it will be kept as secret as possible on orders from on high to prevent public panic and outrage. Details will only filter gently into the media over many years in the future. If you feel the info below is worth investigating, I suggest we need to get media folks to look into it and what can be done to ameliorate potential problems (eg, wearing dust filters when in the smoke to prevent breathing ash, treat ash as hazardous waste Just in case, etc.)
Nuclear Emergency Alert, Global Peace Walk
Check out these two web sites. The first one is a DOE site that details some of the contamination present. The second site is a local citizens monitoring group. www.em.doe.gov/bemr96/lanl.htmlwww.lasg.org
Stephen Dunifer xmtrman@pacbell.net
www.freeradio.org
From: "Paul" webmaster@globalcircle.net
Subject: Los AlamosDate:
Saturday, May 13, 2000 12:53 PMPeace Walk will meet at Kit Carson Park in Taos at 9:00 am tomorrow Sunday May 14, to go to Angelfire for their ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. We get that from Mike and Rev.Yamato in Taos when we talked to them on the phone this morning. Then they plan to come down here to the Espanola area to volunteer help for evacuees etc. and revise their OK City schedule as a result.
I think we all know better than to believe anybody in government that says there's no radiation danger. Lie and cover up is SOP for "national security" (read: saving agency costs and discrediting opposition), from 3-mile Island to every nuclear plant in the country. We do not have verified radiation readings so we are not claiming proof. We just know. After all, they lied to the Navajo uranium miners all those years, and all the lab workers exposed to Beryllium etc. for decades. We have more of this now on our fire page at http://globalcircle.net/losalamosfire.htm . There's a great deal of source information linked there now, and people can make up their own minds. But "national security" always demands that those officials stonewall and cover up.
We've seen everybody who could get his face on TV go on Channel 4 in Albuquerque and claim the air monitors show nothing but "background" levels. They go on and on about no loss of life, and the outpouring of help from around New Mexico. Too many flaws in that to even count them. Reports tell us the original monitors burned up around the lab before getting any readings from them. What they've installed afterward won't tell us what was in the smoke to start with. And who exactly is reading those monitors? Not me or you. Why weren't monitors put out in the 700 places where depleted uranium was exploded for decades? Or where all the outdoor storage of contaminants could burn? And who is monitoring for all the other toxic materials?
My real concern now is for the work crews that have to go in hot and do all kinds of stuff up there because it's their job. Whatever it is, they'll take the brunt of it. What will they die of 2 or 20 years from now?
Barb and I are taking the position that the Lab should be decomissioned, boarded up, fenced, abandoned, and guarded for the next 100 years, minimum.
And none of it's functions should be transferred elsewhere. Everybody who worked and lived there should be compensated and taken care of for life. The whole mountain should be a memorial to the people who suffered, and the animals killed without a thought. Besides, it's sitting on an active fault line.
One microgram of plutonium is lethal. The lab has 2.7 metric TONS. And the Manhattan Project was over 50 years ago.
It all started here. It has to stop here. The world is watching.
--paul
From: pelofson@aol.com <pelofson@aol.com>>
Friday, May 12, 2000 10:46 AM
Subject: Radioactivity at Los Alamos fireOur Radalert nuclear radiation monitor pegged out to it's maximum reading following the RFETS prescribed burn a month ago, and finally settled down about a week afterward. It has picked up and has steadily climbed higher in the past 2 days here in Denver, Colorado again to 12,105 cpm total count, and still climbing.
Unfortunately, our local authorities and DOE people can't seem to pickup anything. Maybe it's due to their monitors being calibrated to the Rocky Flats local high background, so it doesn't pick up anything of note as "it's all background" here. You have to wonder how much the people in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado are being exposed to in that massive plume. Will we ever know - officially that is?
We're trying to minimize going outside as much as possible to avoid it. The satellite photos of the huge plume from the Los Alamos fire shown in our daily papers shows most of the main plume headed east, with some portions headed NE. There may be some portion coming all the way up to Denver, following the mountain range up to us. Question is, Just how much crap is in that huge plume from the 50 years of immediate fallout to the surrounding environs that has been settled into soils, taken up into the burning vegetation, etc.? Any citizens with monitors should be logging daily readings for comparisons.
I hope this disaster teaches DOE and the U.S. Forest Service to stop prescribed burning near any of the DOE facilities. It probably won't. But we can hope.
Yours,
Paula Elofson-Gardine Executive Director Environmental Information Network
In a message dated 5/12/00 9:02:31 AM Mountain Daylight Time, happen@pipeline.com writes
Subj: radioactivity at Los Alamos fire
Date: 5/12/00 9:02:31 AM Mountain Daylight Time
From: happen@pipeline.com (Scott D Portzline)Radioactive materials, including plutonium, uranium and DU, might be dispersed into the atmosphere at Los Alamos due to 50 years of ground contanimation. So far, reports from the media indicate that there is no increased radioactivity. Their focus is on the nuclear weapons materials "safely" stored in fire resistant buildings. But, a man 40 miles away in Sante Fe is recording radioactivity levels3.5 times greater than the safe level. He is not in the wind path.
The report came from Richard Hoagland on Coast to Coast radio last night http://www.em.doe.gov/bemr96/lanl.html
From: "Chris Shine" chris@msmedia.org
Friday, May 12, 2000 4:37 PM
Subject: NM FireNuclear Emergency Alert, Global Peace Walk
I heard about this NM disaster from Richard C. Hoagland on Art Bell's show last night! What a melt-down and it's being blacked out for the most part even though people as far away as Santa Fe are taking Geiger counter readings of 30-40 millirems! There's plutonium and depleted uranium in those smoke plumes!
A while back I sought the media support team that works on shooting the Global Peace Walks, got busy and have since lost that link. I would like to collaborate in shaping a piece with these people-can you put me in touch again?
Thank's for your ceaseless vigilance...
vaya con gaia,
Chris Shine
Imaging Director
Michele Shine Media
San Francisco, USA
chris@msmedia.org
Analysis (prior to the fire) of contaminated areas around Los Alamos -- now turned to cinder with plumes carrying radioactivity.... Click HereLos Alamos Problem of Getting Rid of Contaminated Sites -- Up in Smoke
Run-Off Posing Other Possible Dangers
Work to Start on Containing Contaminated Run-Off
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