![]() Taylor believes that lower Mohave County may have been left out because, at the time of RECA's creation, the county's closest member of Congress was based in Phoenix. ![]() Joe Buglewicz / for NBC News Kingman, Ariz., residents recall seeing flashes from atomic tests from the schoolyard at Palo Christi Elementary School, formerly known as Kingman Grammar School. Lower Mohave County residents were left out of the federal 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. "It really just doesn't make any sense."Īccording to a report by Arizona health officials, Mohave County had one of the highest average cancer rates in the state from 1999 to 2001. She pointed to a 1997 study by the National Cancer Institute that found twice the amount of radiation exposure in lower Mohave County compared to other Arizona counties, such as Gila and Yavapai, which are much farther east of the Nevada Test Site but are now covered by RECA. "It's closer to the Nevada Test Site than any other county in Arizona," said Laura Taylor, a lawyer who focuses on RECA claims. But by the time they returned home, their clothes were coated with oily pink stains, Stephens said.įor more of NBC News' in-depth reporting, download the NBC News app They hurried to get off the mountain, trying to escape the fallout. As they watched the plume shoot into the sky, they could feel the wind blow the smoke and dust toward them. Stephens recalls that as a teenager in 1953, she, her father, her uncle and her brother rode on horseback into the Aquarius Mountains to get a better view of one of the nuclear explosions. ![]() In Las Vegas, only 65 miles from the testing site, businesses billed the tests as tourist attractions to view from hotel windows. Children were given short recesses on testing days to stand in the schoolyard and to watch the explosions turn the sky orange. ![]() Detonation times and dates were advertised in newspapers. Stephens said getting a glimpse of the flashes or enormous mushroom clouds was a form of entertainment. One hundred of the nuclear tests at the site from 1951 to 1962 were above ground. The dangers and fallout of atomic testing were unknown to the public when testing began at the Nevada Test Site, now known as the Nevada National Security Site. "We fought so long for so many years," she said. ![]()
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