Full Body Burden

by Kristen Iversen

  On the afternoon of my last day, I stop by the guard shack to turn in my badge. I’ve heard stories about the mountains of paperwork employees have to sign when they quit. But there’s nothing for me to sign.

  “Nothing?” I ask.

  “Nope,” the guard snaps. He’s in a rush. I’m not the only person in line. “You’re an employee of the Sunnyside Temp Agency, not EG&G or the Department of Energy. Your agreement is with them.”

  My agreement with them is over.

  But my real relationship with Rocky Flats has only just begun. I have boxes of notes, employee newsletters, newspaper articles, my journals, and a burning desire to research the full story of the plant. Now that I’ve been on the inside of Rocky Flats and I’m beginning to understand it from both sides of the fence—the workers and the activists, the government and the local residents—I want to write.

  I call Karma. “I’m going to write a book about Rocky Flats,” I say.

  There’s a long pause. “Big subject,” she says. “Are you scared? No one says anything about Rocky Flats.”

  “I want to write about the two things that have frightened me most in life,” I say. “Rocky Flats, and Dad’s alcoholism.” I can’t tell the story of the plant without telling the story of my family. It all seems connected. The ironic thing about all of this, I think, is that I spent years in Europe, traveling around and looking for things to write about. Nothing had ever happened to me in Arvada, Colorado, I thought, that would be interesting to anyone. It’s turned out that the most important story to tell is quite literally in my own backyard.

  IN JANUARY 1996 I start my new teaching job and spend evenings finishing my Ph.D. dissertation. I’m supposed to graduate in May, but my health worsens.

  One weekend I go hiking with a friend. The snow has melted and spring flowers are just beginning to appear in the high country. We head up to Crested Butte and plan to hike up Refrigerator Pass, an area famous for its wildflowers. We’ve only been on the trail for an hour when I have to stop. The peak still lies ahead; we’re in a long, low valley filled with red and blue buds peeking through the winter grass, and the path is easy and flat. “I need to lie down,” I say. I feel very faint. “You’re running a fever,” my friend says, his hand on my forehead. My heart is racing. My whole body feels swollen. We turn back.

  I go back to the doctor, a new one, and am diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. “It’s mostly in your head,” he says. How can this be in my head? The fever is constant. I have no energy. I’m scared I won’t graduate.

  On April 16, I turn in my dissertation in the morning and see yet another doctor in the afternoon. The left lymph node in my neck feels as big as a football. I’m supposed to begin preparing for my oral defense in May, but it’s hard to think straight. I’m referred to two more specialists. The next morning I write in my journal: I dreamt I was a medical experiment.

  On April 29 I meet with an oncologist. He schedules a biopsy, and tells me that it could be lymphoma or Hodgkin’s disease. I want to wait for the surgery until after my dissertation defense, two weeks away, but he says the surgery can’t wait. At the end of our meeting he tells me to go home and think about who could raise my sons if something happened to me.

  That night, Sean wakes from a bad dream and crawls into my bed. I’ve been careful not to tell the boys all that is happening, but they seem to sense something is wrong. Sean curls up into a warm ball by my side. It isn’t long before Nathan and Heathcliff join us.

  We sleep.

  PETER NORDBERG and his colleagues work steadily, despite the fact that many of the thousands of class members have died or moved elsewhere. This is a crucially important case, not only to the thousands of people whose lives and properties were affected or might be affected in the future, but to the history and legacy of Rocky Flats. The DOE, Rockwell, and Dow Chemical want the full story of Rocky Flats to be suppressed and quickly forgotten.

  There has never been any health monitoring of people living around Rocky Flats. Peter believes that the lives and experiences of these people should not be in vain. If the DOE and Rockwell prevail, it will be easier to make people believe that some plutonium is acceptable, never mind any of the other toxic and radioactive elements released into the environment. Rocky Flats could become a sort of poster child for other contaminated areas around the country that the government wants to turn into wildlife refuges open to the public, potentially putting local communities at risk.

  Peter does his research, carries things around in his head, and puts off writing a brief until the last possible second. Then crunch time begins. He and Mykaila are a team. She works with Peter and reads every opinion, every word of every brief. She keeps the coffeepot full twenty-four hours a day, and the glass of cranberry juice filled on his desk. Food is a no-forks affair; Peter, if he eats at all, eats with one hand and keeps writing with the other. The Nordbergs are sociable with their friends and neighbors, but during crunch time no one comes to the house. The kids are more or less on their own. They know that their parents, and especially their dad, are intensely focused, and they know what’s at stake. The whole household stays up with Peter in his near-trancelike state.

  When the brief is finally finished, it’s like a holiday. Peter pushes back from his desk, plays Pinball Wizard for a while, finishes his last glass of cranberry juice, and sleeps.

  The case drags on.

  ON MAY 4, 1996, I have surgery to remove the left lymph node in my neck. I’m just days away from my dissertation defense and graduation. I haven’t even considered the question the doctor asked me: Who will raise your children if you have lymphoma? It’s an unfair and impossible question.

  I come home with bandages and a stiff white brace around my neck, and sleep for an entire day.

  On May 6, the results come back.

  No cancer.

  I cry with relief. My mother brings the boys back home and we spend the afternoon planting spring flowers in our front yard.

  The following day, May 7, I pass my dissertation defense with the brace and bandages still around my neck. The professors who make up my committee politely refrain from asking about my health, yet afterward they’re not only congratulatory but relieved when I tell them it isn’t cancer. My mother is proud that I’ll have a Ph.D.; I’m one of the few people in my family to go to graduate school. Karma and Karin will follow soon after.

  A few days later I meet with the oncologist again. He tells me that my body is definitely fighting something, and fighting hard, but that he doesn’t know what it is.

  I ask what the next step is. I’m greatly relieved not to have cancer, but the symptoms haven’t gone away.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I treat cancer, and it’s not cancer. I don’t know what it is. I wish you the best.” He escorts me to the door.

  When the neck brace comes off, I have a scar running down the side of my neck. I tell Sean and Nathan it’s a pirate scar. One of my friends at school tells me it’s a “downwinder scar.” I ask what she means. She tells me there’s a stretch near Hanford, Washington, that people call “death mile.” Hanford is, like Rocky Flats, a nuclear production complex, and residents who live downwind from the facility claim there have been unusually high levels of cancer deaths, and many have neck scars from thyroid operations they blame on radioactive releases from the plant.

  My brother and sisters, especially Karma and Kurt, have similar symptoms, particularly chronic fatigue, fever, and swollen lymph nodes. No one has any answers for us. But we’re Norwegian. It’s not acceptable to complain. If you wait long enough, my mother says, just about anything will get better or go away. And our health problems are minor compared to those of others we know.

  IF TAMARA Smith Meza learned anything from growing up in a strong family, it was how to make decisions in her own way. She’s not afraid to buck convention.

  After the surgery for her tumor, the doctor recommends radiation and chemotherapy. What, Tamara asks, will be the benefit or outcom
e? She’s told that the radiation will likely cause her to lose her eyesight, as the tumor is behind one eye. Further, the doctor says, people with her type of tumor have an 85–90 percent chance that the tumor will return, even after radiation and chemo.

  “Then I don’t want it,” she says. “If we don’t know it’s really going to help or not, then I’m going to forgo it.”

  The doctor informs her that her chance of surviving beyond five years is very slim. It could be less. The treatment might help. It’s worth taking a chance.

  “Well,” she says, “what’s the point of doing radiation and chemotherapy if I’m still going to die? What are my other treatment options?”

  There are no other treatment options.

  With her family’s help, Tamara finds a doctor in New York who offers alternative treatment for her type of cancer, including radical diet changes. Slowly Tamara’s health improves. It’s not until her third visit with her New York doctor that she asks him if he’s ever heard of Rocky Flats. “Of course!” he says. She tells him that she moved out to Standley Lake when she was four and has lived near the plant all her life. For a moment he’s speechless. He tells her that there is extensive evidence that shows people who have brain cancer have often had some type of exposure to radioactivity. “In my opinion,” he says, “I’m sure that your brain cancer is related in some way to growing up by Rocky Flats.”

  Tamara’s not surprised, but discovering the cause of her cancer isn’t what matters most to her. What matters are her faith and her family, and making the best of whatever time she’s got left. She continues to have regular MRIs. After three years, there’s no sign of another tumor.

  FOLLOWING THE raid, the DOE began looking for a contractor that could handle cleanup at the plant without going overboard on cost, and in April 1995, Kaiser-Hill Inc. won the contract to begin to coordinate the Rocky Flats cleanup. EG&G continued to manage the plant. About a year later, in April 1996, Mark Silverman stepped down from his position as Rocky Flats manager for the DOE. He was fifty-seven, and his time at Rocky Flats had been notable for a more honest dialogue with the media, a reversal of the DOE’s long-standing policy of rewarding contractors for work attempted (rather than work completed), and for the hosting of the first delegation of Russians to visit Rocky Flats. The job, he said, was taking too big a toll on his personal life. He’d spent three years getting to his office by 6:00 a.m., working into the evening, and then working long into the night from his computer at home. Sometimes he couldn’t sleep anyway.

  He was also discouraged by what he saw as growing apathy in local communities, and worried that citizen indifference might hurt the planned cleanup. “We may have done too good a job of convincing the public that we’re doing things safely at the site,” he said. “As a result, people aren’t so concerned about the site. If the people don’t care, the elected officials don’t care. And if the elected officials don’t care, we can’t get the funding to do the job out here.”

  Four years after he quits, Silverman is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, which he will fight for another four years.

  The DOE said in 1995 that the technology did not exist to clean up the plant adequately, and estimated the project would take seventy years and cost $36 billion. In 2000, the same year when Silverman’s cancer is diagnosed, Kaiser-Hill wins a second contract to complete the closure and cleanup of the entire 6,245-acre site when they agree to do it in less than six years on a budget of $3.96 billion. EG&G is out. Where will the corners be cut? The public won’t find out until after the ink is dry.

  DESPITE ALL his training, Randy’s never had to fight an actual plutonium fire. He’s fought a grass fire or two, along with fires caused by lightning, a fairly common occurrence. One time he’d been standing at the west gate with another firefighter, picking up a pizza for dinner, when they saw lightning strike the ground. They saw the flames and called it in; the fire ended up burning 110 acres in the buffer zone before it was contained.

  Some of the grass fires are intentional. In April 2000, Rocky Flats wants to do a “prescribed burn” of five hundred acres. Since the 1950s, the DOE has used mowers to control vegetation at and around its nuclear facilities. But in 1999 there is a policy change. The DOE plans to conduct prescribed burns of large areas of land not only at Rocky Flats but at other DOE nuclear facilities, including Hanford and Los Alamos, to keep down vegetation. Local residents and independent scientists protest that burning contaminated grass and plants will release radioactive smoke, easily inhaled, that will expose people living in the area to plutonium and other contaminants. Dr. Harvey Nichols and others suggest a less-than-perfect solution: allowing goats to graze on the land and keep the vegetation in check. Unfortunately the goats—like the cattle and the deer—would likely ingest contaminants, but at least the contamination would be contained and not floating over the Denver area. The DOE rejects the idea.

  After pressure from local citizens and the press, the DOE reduces the burn from five hundred acres to a “test burn” of fifty acres on April 6, 2000. The fire creates a large cloud of smoke. Paula Elofson-Gardine, a local resident and executive director of the Environmental Information Network, alerts the media and has a KMGH Channel 7 news crew at her home. Paula has a Radalert Geiger counter, a real-time handheld radiation monitor that measures alpha and beta particles as well as gamma and X-rays, and she and the news team track the cloud and its effect. In less than forty minutes the cloud travels fourteen miles around the metro Denver area, and is visible from Paula’s second-floor window. She and the news crew can smell the metallic odor of the smoke. Before the burn, Paula measures background radiation at 8 to 15 counts per minute. During the burn, the radiation readings quickly reach the highest standard of detection on the Radalert, 19,999 counts per minute, an extraordinarily high level by any standard. The next day the reading goes down to 1,147 counts per minute, and the rate slowly declines over the next few weeks. It stays at about 10 counts per minute above background level for a full year.

  “There is no official evidence of what exactly was in that smoke,” Paula says to the press. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. But few people in the Denver area seem to be paying much attention. They’ve been told that Rocky Flats is being cleaned up, and they believe everything is fine.

  Randy knows that everything is not fine at Rocky Flats. Over the years he’s responded to all sorts of situations on and off the plant site. But not much in the plutonium department. He’s been lucky.

  But on this May morning in 2003, he’s not so lucky.

  It’s not quite Mother’s Day, but spring is in the air. Randy reports for work. He’s captain and his buddy Paul Kuhn is shift commander, and they both are hungry. Because the plant is in the process of shutting down, many of the cafeterias are closed and employees now depend on roach coaches that drive around selling honey buns, sandwiches, and soda. The one that stops at the fire station sells pretty good burritos.

  “I’ll buy breakfast,” Paul says, and hands Randy five bucks. Paul is a stocky guy, solid, originally from Czechoslovakia. Both men are in their forties; they’ve worked together for years.

  Randy takes the money, tucks it in his wallet, and steps out into the sunlight. He’s wearing his dress blues. It’s a fine morning. He reaches for a burrito, and just then his radio goes off.

  “Fire response,” the voice says. A “pyrophoric incident,” as Kaiser-Hill and the DOE like to call it. “Building 371.”

  Randy’s heart jumps. “What do you do when you hear something’s happened in 371?” the men often joke. “You pucker.”

  At this point, Building 371 is the most active plutonium building on-site. That’s where they try to stabilize plutonium before shipping it off to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina for storage. All the weapons-grade plutonium on-site ends up at Building 371 sooner or later. And the building is huge, a maze of corridors and underground levels and stairwells. There are many steps, and it takes firefighters a long time to get into the bu
ilding and then get out again, especially with all their cumbersome equipment.

  Breakfast is forgotten. Randy sprints back inside. He and Paul gear up, jump in the fire truck, and head down to the Zone. The radio crackles again. “Fire confirmed.” No word on how big it is, but Randy knows the size doesn’t really matter. If it’s a plutonium fire, big or small, it’s bad.

  They pull the fire truck up to the front of the building. A shrill alarm fills the air. They begin strapping on their air tanks. Evacuation has begun. Workers pour through the doors and stand nervously outside in the sunlight. Randy races through his mental checklist: dosimeter, badge, regulator, mask, full tank of air. All good. Both men are tense, but they keep their emotions in check.

  Suddenly the building manager emerges. “Wait,” he shouts. “Wait! There was a fire, but they put it out.”

  “What?” Randy says. It’s hard to hear with all the noise. The manager repeats his words.

  “It’s out. The fire is out.”

  Paul and Randy exchange looks. It takes a moment to realize what he’s saying, and their relief is palpable.

  Randy shifts gears, from fourth gear to second. “So, okay,” he says to Paul and the other fire personnel. “It’s not that big a deal now. But we still need to go in and investigate. We need to make sure that even though the fire is out, conditions are safe.”

  Paul nods. Time is still critical. It’s agreed that Randy will go interior and Paul will stay exterior. They’ll keep in radio contact as best as they can. Many of the buildings at Rocky Flats are so deep underground and so complex that radio communication doesn’t always work.

  Randy begins descending the steps with two more firefighters following behind. The fire has been reported in the sub-basement, and it’s a long way down. They’re halfway there when Randy’s radio crackles again.

  The fire has rekindled.