LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — During the height of the Cold War and atomic nuclear testing, Las Vegas became home to one of the largest atomic testing sites in the country.
Since 1992, the U.S. Government stopped above-ground and underground atomic testing, but the fallout is a battle that many in America — and here in Clark County — are still fighting.
With the blockbuster hit "Oppenheimer" hitting theaters this weekend, there's a renewed interest in the Atomic Testing Era, and the decades-long impact it's left on Americans, the environment, and future generations to come.
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In the vast Nevada desert, there are many stories of people who lived to tell about the effects of nuclear fallout — and many who did not.
Ian Zabarte is the Principal Man of the Shoshone Nations, and his story is a deeply personal one.
"My grandfather used to tell us to stop kicking around dust because he knew," he told Channel 13. "He didn't want us to breathe it."
Zabarte says as he grew up many of his family and community members would go missing, though he would later realize that they actually died of cancer.
"I went home to the reservation for good and then I started realizing everyone was dying," he said.
During an interview with Channel 13, Zabarte wore a special choker made by his uncle, who would eventually die from throat cancer.
"My uncle's throat fell out," he said. "I wear [this] as a way to remember him and honor him and the suffering he went through."
Zabarte — as well as his uncle, and many others in the Shoshone Nations — identifies as a "downwinder," which is a term used to describe Americans exposed to atomic and nuclear above-ground testing debris.
"We cannot just pick up and leave in the event of radiation fallout," Zabarte says. "If we leave, we lose our identity."
Zabarte says Downwinders can be categorized into two groups — near Downwinders and far Downwinders. Overall, he says anyone within 100 to 150 miles of fallout debris can still get acute exposure, due to the fallout cloud that can travel miles across land.
"If it encounters rain, the rain brings [the debris] to the ground," Zabarte said.
Located roughly 65 miles outside of Las Vegas — somewhere in Mercury, NV — sits the Nevada National Security Site, previously known as the Nevada Test Site.
The site is the former home of atomic and nuclear testing that took place from 1945 to 1992.
During this time, the U.S. Government released 100 atmospheric atomic bombs and conducted 921 underground tests. Something Kevin Kamps, a radioactive waste specialist, describes as the "biggest radiological disaster in U.S. testing history."
"When the Nevada test site was opened in 1951, one of the atomic energy commission documents revealed the attitude of the officials' making decisions," Kamps told Channel 13. "It was that cowboys, Indians, and Mormons were a 'low-use segment' of the population, so they felt okay about the fallout."
The toxins from the tests would land on people, livestock, and vegetation hundreds of miles away from the site.
Kamps adds, "These poisons, they’re not natural. It causes cancer, it causes birth defects, and it causes genetic damage."
The people of the Shoshone Nation took a direct hit, due to their unique lifestyle practices that would put them into direct contact with debris.
"There’s a canyon of dead wood that's good for using to heat houses," Zabarte told Channel 13. "So we’re using the wood to heat our houses, we’re using the wood in our campfires, and we’re using the wood in our sweats."
He adds, "Even our prayers could be exposing us."
Kamps says the nuclear fallout caused "an epidemic of thyroid cancer" in the United States. "So many people are not aware of how much radiation spread all throughout the United States and beyond."
Kirk Gladwin, a former Las Vegas resident working with the National Cancer Benefit Center, spoke with Channel 13 about the work he's down with Downwinders like Zabarte. For the last 25 years, Gladwin says he's helped people that worked at the Nevada Test Site, and even people who worked at Area 51.
"I guess it was back in the middle of the 1990s, I started helping people with claims of cancer that were subjected to government-created radiation," he said. "One of those programs as we know today is 'Downwinders.'"
In 1900, the U.S. Government recognized people who were exposed to radiation when Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, known as RECA. The legislation provides Downwinders with a one-time payment of $50,000, but only if they live in certain counties in Arizona, Utah, and Nevada — not including Clark County.
Kamps says for many Downwinders, qualifying for RECA is next to impossible. "In New Mexico, many of the Indigenous or Latinx communities just south of the Trinity Explosion on July 16, 1945, have never been acknowledged as Downwinders."
Decades later, many got one step closer to receiving that recognition.
On Thursday evening, the U.S. Senate passed an amendment to RECA, expanding eligibility to finally include New Mexico. But the fight continues as the bill is set to expire in 2024, meaning compensation for Downwinders would come to an end.
