#poppy war will be after that one. it was a case of literally grabbing the first book i found when i couldn't sleep | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

moonaft · 6 years ago

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Night and Silence

Rosemary and Rue

A Local Habitation

An Artificial Night

Late Eclipses

One Salt Sea

Ashes of Honor

Chimes At Midnight

Interlude : Full of Briers

The Winter Long

A Red-Rose Chain

Once Broken Faith

Interlude : Dreams and Slumbers

The Brightest Fell

Interlude : Of Things Unknown

I read this the day after Halloween.

Spoilers up to Night and Silence and October 2018 for the Patreon stories.

To answer a question from the book summary: who remembers about Gillian?

Well...

Simon Torquill, obviously. Evening. Raysel. Sylvester, Luna, and the staff of Shadowed Hills 20 years ago. Most of Toby’s allies, including Quentin and his parents. The Lordens. The Luidaeg. Several of the night haunts. Brucer and probably some other people from Home. The SF police department. Literally any one who was listening at the elf-shot conclave.

In short, there’s a lot of people who know about Gillian.

Anyways, onto the main story.

Does Faerie not have therapists? If you can go away for a hundred years and come back fine, you probably don’t need therapists. Danny is the closest Toby’s got.

It’s good that Tybalt doesn’t blame Toby for her mother’s actions.

Back to therapy with Danny and Quentin after catching the flying pig-hedgehogs. Point of clarification: deposing Rhys is not treason because Toby never swore to him.

“No longer the custom to greet those of no family name with the name of their species” - Is that why Simon called May “Milady Fetch” last book? And mixed bloods and changelings would have it rough. “Milady Siren-Sea Wight-Banshee” for the false Queen?

Nolan seems to be settling in well.

Dianda would be an excellent mother-in-law, just saying.

Hi May! Sounds like both Jazz and Tybalt have major depression and PTSD from last book. Poor Jazz, poor Tybalt.

Hi Cliff!

And Cliff has turned to stalking now? At least Miranda knows that she’s stepped too far.

At least Gillian is an adult now and can visit her estranged mother if she wants to, assuming she survives this. Poor Gillian.

Yes, May usually doesn’t get to go on field trips. She’s not missing this one.

Poor Raj. The fallout from The Brightest Fell is hitting everyone hard.

Has Arden actually talked to Toby about shifting loyalties before, or is that what Toby thinks is coming next?

I really hope this isn’t Simon’s work.

Toby has a fan! I knew there must be fae out there who look up to her!

Well, those marshwater charms aren’t suspicious at all... At least Jocelyn isn’t affected. I wonder if it’s like iron for the fae.

Hi Bridget! Who else in the cast of characters are we going to get today? Berkeley means Walther and probably Jack the grad student, and then maybe April? Or Mags?

Nicely done on the magic, Toby. I wonder if the red hair is the color of fox fur?

Don’t swallow glass, Toby, it’s not good for you.

Poor Gillian.

OK, they found a weird pocket dimension. Not what I was expecting.

Do Quentin and May see something different than Toby? She sees only one house.

Weird chicken house is weird.

Confirmed that April is no longer the Countess of Tamed Lightning. I guess she could take over if her mothers wanted to take a long vacation.

“Get your fuzzy butts over here” - Toby, that’s still not how we talk about royalty. I hope Shade will be amused.

Is cinnamon Jocelyn’s magic scent? It’s certainly not close to Simon’s.

Hi Arden! What do you mean, you’re not supposed to be here? Not even going to Annwn triggered that response.

So the fae did come to North America before the Europeans, or at least before the 19th century.

So Shade rules the Court of Golden Cats, which isn’t really part of the Court of Dreaming Cats. This really doesn’t jive with how Tybalt and Colleen were in London.

Jocelyn, I had such high hopes for you.

I love Toby pretending to be Jocelyn’s mom and I don’t know why.

Jocelyn, no. Don’t do this.

Weird house #2. I’m over 1/3 of the way through this book, why has no one brought up the Luidaeg yet?

That must be terrifying for Marlis - “hey sis, can you check on the false queen who is still sleeping in your basement? No reason.”

I bet it’s some sort of illusion magic, making Toby think it’s the false queen, like Oleander did. Or maybe Simon could grab the false queen’s blood to do magic.

Yeah, that’s not Gillian.

So that’s not another doppleganger...

Baobhan Sidhe, that was mentioned in April’s interlude.

Hi Tybalt! And Toby’s covered in blood again.

Are Baobhan Sidhe Maeve’s bloodworkers? Or does Titania or Oberon get two bloodworking races? Water can be used for illusion magic, sometimes.

The last time they couldn’t get in contact with Dean, Evening had returned. That’s not good.

So Toby got attacked by a vampire, fun.

Has Goldengreen become a replacement Home? Marcia is good. I remain curious about how much the war against the merlins is common knowledge, she seems to know a lot about it.

Marcia, can you lend Toby some non-blood-covered clothes? Please?

The “long lost estranged sister” card can only played once, Toby. I guess if you ever need to explain August to them, she can be your cousin, the daughter of your “Uncle” Simon.

Fuck off, Miranda.

She has a fae-repealing thorn, what the hell?

She’s her grandmother??? And Janet - that’s Janet Carter who broke Maeve’s Ride, for sure. Amandine’s mother is Janet Carter, makes sense. And completely josses the idea of any non-Three-derived fae, ok. Everyone’s fae or human or both, no aliens here.

May’s right, there’s something disturbing about Janet’s relationship with Cliff, her granddaughter’s ex-fiancee, and the father of her great-granddaughter.

Clearly Janet hasn’t been paying attention to recent news.

It sounds like Amandine went with the Torquill boys to California, if Janet’s been there long enough that Gilad’s parents knew about the spot. She followed Amandine, after Amandine followed the twins.

Dammit Toby, you need to tell Quentin his mother was a changeling. This is Sylvester all over again.

So breaking the Ride led to Faerie being sealed away? So Janet breaks the ride, Maeve curses Janet, she leaves?, and Oberon seals the deeper lands and leaves as well. Titania is not mentioned at this point in the story.

Or, the Luidaeg implies she’s still there for the Ride? At least, Titania is not implied to be missing at this point.

Tam Lin was going to go somewhere - or, he was going to die to feed Faerie, and then Maeve had to go instead, except it wasn’t death for her. If humans are sealed in deeper Faerie, that might kill them but not one of the Three. And then Maeve was gone, but Titania wasn’t or Faerie would have been thrown out of whack before the Ride.

So what did Maeve do to Titania in response to the Luidaeg’s binding?

Janet is reminding me of August here.

Tam Lin would get a peaceful death, I hope Maeve isn’t actually dead.

Yeah, it’s implied that Maeve could come back one day.

So there isn’t a geass on the world to make it forget about Dawn. Toby remembers that Dawn existed! Not enough to ask about why Evening pretended Dawn was her sister, and clearly neither Patrick nor Sylvester are bothering to ask why. So who killed Dawn?

Who constructed the old knowe?

“...whose only job is constructing life-threatening situations.” Sounds right, Quentin.

Hi vampire lady!

And May and Quentin are elf-shot. Again.

Poor Gillian, elf-shot again.

Yes, please, go get Dianda. Toby has so many allies these days.

How old are these kids? Gillian was what, four, when Toby went into the pond? She’s out fourteen years later, and it’s been four years since then. She should be twenty two or so. If Jocelyn’s the same age, Home closed when she was eighteen. Toby went to Home when she was twenty five, but Dare and Manuel were twelve, I think. Jocelyn wasn’t too young, in that case. I don’t think Home had an age limit.

DUGAN’S NOT DEAD??? My God.

Hi Kennis! Toby has a new ally.

Hi Dianda, Patrick and Sylvester. Good to see you all awake, unharmed and ready to help.

So is Dawn Evening’s changeling granddaughter turned pureblood? I’m not getting the sense that Evening ever had changeling kids. Maybe Dawn is a former changeling and Evening’s daughter?

ARE YOU SERIOUS? They’re ALL human descended? It’s not just Maida, Aethlin is descended in part from a human? And Septiminus is Evening’s grandson, so either he or his parent was a changeling-turned-pureblood? It’s not just the twins? Unless the family name came from Glynis? And Dugan too!

The Merrows’ Firstborn is the child of Titania and a human, but not all Merrow are Lordens, so there’s another human in the Saltmist family’s history. Toby, why aren’t you reacting to this? Gillian, I know. But this is important!!

Where are all these hope chests?

Oh, poor Gillian. Poor Toby.

Is Dugan working for Evening? Or maybe Simon?

Plasedon’tbeSimonpleasedon’tbeSimon - ok, it’s Dugan, or maybe Simon pretending to be Dugan.

Whoops, there he is again. Played your last card there, Dugan.

At least Cliff is taking the lies well. I’m not sure Gillian’s going to understand the whole Amandine-August-Simon-Evening thing.

Hi Siwan! Toby, if you ever piss off Arden too much, you can hang out in Portland. It’ll be fine.

Hi Jolgier! This should be a good solution. Though shouldn’t Shade take charge? Well, seven years should be enough to put Raj on the throne.

Maybe Dean can make Goldengreen into the new Home. Marcia’s already halfway there.

Interlude: Suffer a Sea-change

Oh poor Gillian.

This is taking place right before Christmas, that sucks.

Yes, punch Jocelyn in the throat. You are going to like Dianda, maybe you can hang out at Goldengreen with Dean.

She doesn’t remember the Luidaeg at all.

OK, whatever Miranda’s line needs to do, it’s related to the fae blood they have. Gillian isn’t bound why whatever Amandine, August or Toby need to do. Is it taking Maeve’s place in eternal sleep?

Poppy gets to go fight spiders, apparently. Good to know she’s doing well.

Hi Firtha, sorry you’re dead. You seem cool.

Oh poor Toby and Gillian. She never knew how much Toby cares for her.

I do appreciate having Gillian’s POV on all this. Wonder what’s going to happen when she gets the cliffsnotes version of the entire series?

Gillian, you are the best.

Hello Miranda, it is very creepy you married the ex-fiance of your granddaughter and the father of your great-granddaughter. I think you wanted a second chance to raise your daughter since Amandine pushed you away.

Oh shit, she’s dead again.

Wait, no, she’s ok. I think the skin is invisible outside of Faerie but she doesn’t know it yet.

Aw, Poppy’s apprenticed to the Luidaeg!

Yep, the Luidaeg is terrifying but Gillian doesn’t have the old tales to know what the rest of Faerie thinks.

Yeah, Gillian can’t outrun the elfshot by being Selkie for a hundred years because I’m pretty sure there won’t be Selkies in another year, depending on what the bargain is.

Look Miranda, you’re getting off easy at the moment. You’re also acting like a homophobic mother whose daughter just came out and can’t reconcile your hate with your love.

Gillian, you’ll love hanging out with Quentin and May and Jazz. It’ll be great.

I can’t fault Elizabeth Ryan for always having a drink in her hand.

Yeah, I think the Selkies that currently have skins will become Roane or Roane-equivalent - no more passing the skins down the line. Anyone who doesn’t have a skin is going to turn human or die.

This is a good ending point.

One more book to come.

#october daye #october daye spoilers

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lodelss · 4 years ago

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Yxta Maya Murray | Longreads | August 2020 | 4,990 words (20 minutes)

— with thanks to Dr. Alex Pivovaroff

Chaparral spreads its hard, green shine over the hills and valleys of Southern California. This tough-leafed shrub community established itself as part of the local plant landscape millions of years ago. It flourishes during the area’s rainy springs, and survives droughts by plunging its sturdy roots deep into granite bedrock, which can hold a surprising amount of water.

Chaparral also bears a reputation for fire. These plants have adapted to the types of blazes Southern California’s semi-arid landscape has historically endured, and some varieties of chaparral evolved a literally incendiary mode of survival: their seeds need to burn in order to sprout. After wildfires scorch the land, the chaparral bursts into a glossy biome, hosting fire-follower poppy blossoms that fan out over the blackened hills.

Los Angeles has always lacked an adequate supply of indigenous water.

This problem brings out the worst in its settlers, who adapt to the landscape with as much scorched-earth ingenuity as does the chaparral.

Los Angeles incorporated in 1850, two years after the end of the Mexican-American War. That year, government officials calculated that the city possessed a population of 1,610 white people, 70 Native people, 12 black people, and 2 Chinese people.

The city soon became a magnet for farmers, ranchers, and entrepreneurs, many of whom made their fortunes by supplying California Gold Rush miners up north with beef, sugar, flour, and mining equipment.

In order to distribute the waters of the flowing Río Porciúncula — now known as the Los Angeles River — to the agricultural lands to the west, Spanish settlers outfitted the river with a zanja madre, a “mother trench.” Women and Indigenous servants would carry water from the river to households in clay pots called ollas.

These efforts did not do enough to quench the ever-growing thirst of Southern California.

In 1836, Don Rafael Guirado, one of Los Angeles’s most powerful citizens and the future father-in-law of Governor John Downey, determined that the water level in the Río Porciúncula’s zanjas had ebbed too low. He instructed the local council to gather a group of deputies to arrest all “drunken Indians” and compel them to work on the mother trench, whose waters were fouled with debris as well as bacteria and viruses. Overseers commanded that the slaves increase the water output of the zanja system through unspecified measures. No records detailing these people’s sufferings survive.

In late 1862 and early 1863, smallpox tore through Los Angeles’s Native and Mexican communities. The epidemic spread when victims washed in the polluted water in the zanjas. At least 200 people died.

In 1866, jurors in Los Angeles acquitted a French immigrant named Armand Michel Josef Lachenais of the murder of a fellow countryman named Henry Delaval, with whom he’d argued about the internal workings of the French Benevolent Society. Lachenais later also murdered a Native vineyard worker, Pablo Moreno, but the California Supreme Court tossed his conviction because his indictment had been based on the testimony of Native witnesses. Local gossips whispered that Lachenais also slaughtered his wife, Doña María, but prosecutors never brought charges against him for this crime.

Still, Lachenais went too far when, in 1870, he quarreled with his neighbor, a 53-year-old Pennsylvanian and industrious capitalist named Jacob Bell, over the withdrawal of water from a zanja installed on their lands’ border. After the two men traded angry words, Lachenais grabbed his gun and mounted his horse. He then stalked Bell and shot him two or three times, killing him. Lachenais was arrested and secured in the local calaboose, but a vigilance committee descended upon the jail and tore Lachenais out of his cell. This armed mob — at least 200 men strong, and whose leaders included a Methodist preacher — hauled Lachenais to a corral on New High Street. A Samaritan leapt on top of a wooden box and attempted to preach against a lynching, but the vigilantes kicked the box from under him only to use it to prop Lachenais beneath the corral. The men strung a rope around Lachenais’s throat and removed the box. They watched as Lachenais strangled to death.

In 1898, hot winds aggravated a prevailing drought that scoured the 48-year-old city of Los Angeles. Sugar beet crops shattered. Grain yields perished. Conditions grew so extreme that, a year later, Methodist ministers in Los Angeles “invoke[d] the god of storms” and asked the heavens “why he ha[d] withheld rain from the thirsting fields of Southern California.”

Severe drought conditions persisted off and on in Los Angeles for the next six years. The dryness did not discourage newcomers. In 1900, Los Angeles’s population grew faster than that of any of the larger cities in the United States.

In 1902, Southern California’s booming sugar beet industry braced to supply 165,000,000 pounds of sugar to the Pacific Coast states. But the drought threatened the harvest. Factories built new irrigation systems and sank artesian wells. Nevertheless, water demands continued to outstrip supply.

In 1902 and then again in 1904, cattle began to die.

The drought which has continued through Southern California for more than three months just at the season when under normal conditions there is the most plentiful supply of water, is becoming a serious matter to ranchers and particularly to owners of livestock . . . . No rain has fallen here since October 1. (The San Francisco Call, January 12, 1904)

In 1904, the same year that the newspapers reported livestock losses, onetime Los Angeles Mayor Fred Eaton began to wrest water rights from Owens Valley landowners through a series of dark deals. Though Owens Valley sat 250 miles away from L.A., Eaton had discerned that the Owens River could be funneled down easily to his city on account of the Valley’s 4,000-foot elevation over the desert. He traveled through the area, visiting farmers and ranchers, and soon began negotiating prices and terms. Eaton was accompanied by his friend and co-conspirator J.B. Lippincott, the supervising engineer of all Pacific coast irrigation projects administered under Teddy Roosevelt’s Reclamation Act. Lippincott, who acted as a double agent during these tours, led Owens Valley men to believe that Eaton acquired their sun-seared properties for Reclamation purposes, rather than as part of Eaton’s plot to steal their water for L.A. For nearly a year, Eaton managed to keep his plans secret even though his machinations were supported by famous oligarchs like Harrison Gray Otis, the owner and publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and transportation tycoon Moses H. Sherman.

Eventually, though, the word got out.

Los Angeles Plots Destruction, Would Take Owens River, Lay Lands Waste, Ruin People, Homes and Communities, a small Owens Valley newspaper headline declared in 1905, prompting widespread community protests.

Eaton was a stubborn man, and he continued fighting for his vision of an Edenic Los Angeles despite the outrage. A designer named William Mulholland would fulfill his vision, overseeing the construction of the new, huge aqueduct that would divert the Owens River to the city and prove the Valley newsmongers right.

William Mulholland was a well-built and laconic Irishman who had arrived in Los Angeles by way of Pittsburgh in 1877. He began his career as an energetic ditch-digger and gold prospector. Soon enough, he rose through the Los Angeles City Water Company’s ranks to become superintendent, overseeing the workings of the zanjas, and became head of the Department of Water and Power when the city took over the water system. When he began building the aqueduct in 1907, he was 52 and possessed no formal engineering education.

William Mulholland hired a crew of 5,000 men who spent the next five years working with hand shovels, mules, and dynamite to raise the 230-mile system, which became the world’s largest water-supply project at the time. They finished the aqueduct on time and below cost. When Mulholland unveiled the marvel at a ceremony in Sylmar in 1913, he looked up at the Owens river coursing down through the San Fernando Valley and said to the crowd, “There it is, take it.”

Still, the business of large-scale water diversion would not be that simple. Owens Valley farmers and ranchers, who found their lands destroyed by the withdrawal of the river, rebelled. They dynamited a section of the aqueduct in May 1924. Then, that August, renegades kidnapped and prepared to lynch one of Mulholland’s accomplices, Leicester Hall, an attorney and the treasurer of the Owens River Canal Company. Hall saved his own life by making the Freemason’s distress signal, which was recognized by a fellow Freemason in the murderous throng.

Mulholland was not deterred. With the success of the aqueduct, he began to dream bigger and more dangerously. He decided that the aqueduct was an incomplete solution for the needs of Los Angeles, and began scouting locations for the construction of a dam, in case a drought ever outpaced Owens water. He settled on San Francisquito Canyon, a federally held tract that hollows the Sierra Pelona Mountains. The canyon, which can be reached from Los Angeles in under an hour by car, is formed mostly out of solid sandstone, red siltstone, shale, and conglomerate stone. However, a decade earlier, work crews tunneling through the area had discovered that the canyon was layered through with schist in its northeastern section. And, in a 1911 report, Mulholland and Lipincott wrote that the schist might be unstable.

Mulholland nevertheless ignored the troubling condition of the area and proceeded to build in the canyon. The St. Francis Dam became operational in 1926.

It began to develop fissures and leaks within a year.

On the morning of March 12, 1928, the dam held more than 12 billion gallons of water. That day, Mulholland visited the site with Tony Harnischfeger, the dam keeper. Harnischfeger showed Mulholland several muddy outflows in the dam’s western edge. Mulholland studied the cracking for an hour and a half before telling Harnischfeger to report back to him three times a day about the embankment’s condition.

Mulholland then stepped back into his chauffeur-driven Marmon sedan and returned to Los Angeles, where they had lunch at about 2 p.m.

About 10 hours later, around midnight, the dam burst open and emptied entirely into the canyon. No one who witnessed the breach survived. The flood killed Harnischfeger instantly, as well as his son, Coder, and Harnischfeger’s girlfriend, Leona Johnson. The water hurled toward a power plant called Powerhouse Number 2, where it drowned laborers and teachers. It continued to crash into the Santa Clara River Valley. It blasted into a Southern California Edison construction camp, killing 84 people, before emptying debris and bodies into the Pacific Ocean, 54 miles from the source point. Historians estimate a death toll between 400 and 600.

At the coroner’s inquest, investigators asked Mulholland why he did not react to the seepage Harnischfeger had shown him on the morning of the catastrophe.

“The only ones I envy about this thing are the ones who are dead,” Mulholland said.

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10.

Between 2011 and 2014, a Cal State Northridge graduate student in archaeology named Ann Stansell compiled the names of the victims of the St. Francis Dam’s collapse.

Some of the names are: Luz Alvarado, Jesus Alvarez, Clinton Anderson, and Georgie Basolo.

And: Maria DeJesus Carrillo, Hipolito Cerna, Homer Coe, Walter Colburn, Marguerite Cowden, and Rosarita Erratchuo.

And: Señora Figueroa, Lorenzo Florez, Mrs. Forrester, John Harold Frame, Elizabeth “Tootsie” Garcia, Charles Glenn, John Earl Gold, Richard Gottardi, and Esther Luna.

And: Jose Martinez, Paul Massetti, Vidae Louise Mathews, Charles Edgar McCarty, Teviarro Monorez, Roy Morrow, and Francisco Ochoa.

11.

In the 1920s, agriculture spread across L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. Farmers cultivated oranges, lemons, walnuts, tomatoes, grapes, beets, barley, corn, and lima beans. Many of the laborers who coaxed the fruit from the land were Mexican men and women, working for white landowners. The Latino laborers were ill-paid and -sheltered. But in the 1930s, they found competition in the drought refugees who had fled the Oklahoma and Arkansas dust bowls to seek work in L.A.

These refugees, while white, were perhaps even less welcome than the Latino workers, whom L.A. chieftains regarded as lazy and shiftless demi-humans, “bovine and tractable”; that is, they did not object too vocally to being housed in miserable shacks on overseers’ properties.

The influx of Dust Bowl migrants became so overwhelming that L.A. County Supervisors recommended that they be counted as they crossed over the state line. Herbert C. Legg, Chairman of the County Board of Commissioners, assured the public that the government did not pursue this surveillance in order to intimidate refugees or facilitate their arrest, but rather to ensure that they received sufficient care.

The Federal Government has assumed responsibility for drought relief and it is important to our State that such drought relief follow sufferers when they leave drought areas, he said, in 1936.

Chairman Legg either lied when he said this, or did not know what he was talking about.

A housing boom had started in L.A. in the 1920s, and small single-family homes began to sprout on the chaparral-blooming hillsides. Black people, Latinos, Asians, Slavs, Jews, and Italians were barred from living in certain neighborhoods. But a respectable class of Anglos with ready cash were allowed to colonize the valleys, which they did with enthusiasm, jubilantly planting small farms and decorating their homes with the flowers that sprouted around them. During Christmastime, these new minor land barons would adorn their hearths with the poisonous leaves and red berries of the native toyon plant, otherwise known as “hollywood.” This potentially dangerous practice grew so popular that the state outlawed toyon’s harvesting on public land.

City leaders welcomed this kind of moneyed and house-proud white person, who would buy a parcel and work in one of L.A.’s many new utility companies and other industries — Southern California Edison, for example, or the proliferating studios of Hollywood. But the Okies repelled the Southland’s elite. News outlets such as the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine called them relief chiselers, while other periodicals called them white trash, marginal people, and irresponsible wandering hordes. Vigilantes would assault their meeting places and encampments. And in 1936, the same year that Legg gave his assurances that he only monitored migrants to ensure their safety, L.A. police chief James Edgar Davis dispatched patrolmen to meet drought refugees at the California-Arizona border and force them back to where they came from.

Ever hear of the border patrol on the California line? Police from Los Angeles — stopped you bastards, turned you back. Says, if you can’t buy no real estate we don’t want you. (John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath)

12.

Due to the explosive advances in nuclear science in the 1950s, the problems of drought, flood, atrocity, and inequality would intensify in California.

Simi Valley, a Ventura County community that is now famous as the location of the East County Courthouse, which hosted the failed 1992 Rodney King prosecution of four LAPD officers, is also the home of one of the nation’s first commercial nuclear power plants. The Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) housed North American Aviation’s (NAA) Rocketdyne division as well as Atomics International, a developer of nuclear reactors. SSFL was built on Simi Hills, a low mountain ridge south of the Valley. It began operations in 1947 and was closed by its current primary owner, Boeing, in 2006.

NAA scientists used the laboratory to test reactors and rocket engines, and to manufacture plutonium fuel. In the 1950s, lab employees — often people in their early 20s hired as manual laborers and security personnel — helped physicists and engineers test the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE).

The SRE was a nuclear reactor that would go critical (that is, become capable of providing power) if fed with massive quantities of uranium, as well as tetralin and sodium coolants. Excitement abounded across Southern California when the SRE began delivering a small amount of electricity to Moorpark, a nearby city in Ventura County, in 1957.

In January 1959, however, some of the lab operators noticed a sticky black substance in the reactor, a probable leaking of tetralin that the facility’s higher-ups ordered to be cleaned off. The tetralin, however, continued leaking, gumming up the SRE and failing to cool the sodium. Around July 12, the sodium penetrated into the uranium fuel elements, creating huge quantities of blazing-hot radioactive gases. In other words: the SRE experienced a partial core meltdown, to which lab engineers responded by shutting down the reactor on July 13, only to continue operating it on and off until July 26. The engineers dealt with the gases by expelling them into the atmosphere for weeks.

Forty-eight days after the accident, the Atomic Energy Commission and Atomics International issued a press statement that described the incident in confusing jargon and relied heavily on the passive voice — “a parted fuel element was observed” — and misled the public about the danger they were in. The fuel element damage is not an indication of unsafe reactor conditions. No release of radioactive materials to the plant or its environs occurred.

It has been estimated that the July 1959 incident expelled 240 times the amount of radioactivity as Three Mile Island.

Despite the magnitude of this catastrophe, the lab continued to operate and was the site of further disasters. In 1964, and then again in 1969, reactors designed to power U.S. space missions experienced damage to 80 percent and about 30 percent of their fuel, respectively. No one informed the public about these accidents, either.

As of this year, the site remains brimming with radioactive contamination despite the fact that in 2007, NASA, Boeing, and the Department of Energy (DOE) signed a Consent Order for Corrective Action with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, which mandated a cleanup by 2017. This deadline has now obviously passed, and the area remains the subject of much community concern and speculation.

In August 2018, residents urged members of Simi Valley City Council to forbid the city from using groundwater as drinking water. If groundwater were so employed, it could not only imperil Simi Valley’s tonier bedroom communities, but also create specific dangers for people who cannot afford bottled water. Such folks include Simi Valley’s small but at-risk homeless population, who must scramble for resources and yet are targeted as irresponsible wandering hordes by the city’s Proactive Cleanup of Homeless Encampments Program. The Council embarked upon a study to evaluate the safety of funneling groundwater into public facilities and private residences, but put this project on hold when confronted with community dissent.

One of the supplicants, Jessica Geselle, a 39-year-old mother of two, said that she had been diagnosed with thyroid and uterine cancer that she believed was caused by her exposure to Santa Susana pollutants.

I’m here tonight to beg of you not to put groundwater in our homes … (and) keep our future generations safe, she said.

13.

In 2010 and 2011, the DOE began interviewing former employees of the Santa Susana lab in order to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement. Federal procedure requires such a statement to be filed before a contaminated area may receive the “remediation” that residents of Simi Valley and the nearby San Fernando Valley continue to await.

Some of the employees the DOE talked to mentioned throwing radioactive or contaminated material into a “sodium burn pit” between the 1950s and the 1970s, and dumping radioactive materials into the ocean. Some of them discussed how much they had enjoyed their jobs, which had kept them busy and on the go. A number of workers described fires and accidents at the lab. Others reported that many of their former project managers, shift managers, and co-workers had died of cancer.

One respondent, who is known in the report as Interviewee #258, explained that he had been part of the Rocketdyne police force, where he worked as a patrolman and a sergeant. Interviewee #258 said he had mostly been assigned to gate-guard duty, but that he also worked in the Rocketdyne fire department when they needed the extra help.

Interviewee #258 explained that his superiors never cautioned him about any personal exposure to radioactive materials. He did, however, remember that there had been a pond of water in SSFL’s Area II, which was not adjacent to any test stands. Fish lived in that pond, he said. He recounted how the fish looked strange, even grotesque.

Interviewee #258 also said that he had once seen a brushfire in Area IV, which once held the SRE.

No buildings were burned but a lot of trees, brush, shrubbery and weeds were destroyed. I don’t recall the exact cause of the fire but it occurred during very hot weather and it took all day to extinguish.

14.

The Woolsey fire ignited in Simi Valley on November 8, 2018, at 2:24 p.m. According to news reports, the fire began at the Santa Susana Lab, possibly because of a malfunction at Southern California Edison’s Chatsworth substation, which is located on site. The fire appears to have originated within 1,000 feet of the SRE’s partial meltdown.

The surrounding scrub-filled areas were parched as a result of a drought California had endured since December 27, 2011, and which would not end until March 5, 2019. Some experts describe the period of heat and dryness from 2012 to 2014 as the worst California has seen in 1,200 years.

The flames spread quickly to the surrounding weeds and brush.

Santa Susana once possessed a crack firefighting force alongside its police unit, but this team seems to have either dwindled to a skeleton crew or been more thoroughly dismantled; the status of the firefighting troop remains unclear as Boeing did not answer reporters’ questions in the aftermath of the fire. Moreover, no one who witnessed the fire’s outbreak has come forward to describe what happened, perhaps due to the pressures of lawsuits that have been filed against the aircraft manufacturer as well as Edison.

The fire burned freely through the contamination. On the very day the fire broke out, about 400 firefighters had been called away to battle another blaze, the Hill fire, which ran amok 15 miles to the west. The response to Woolsey saw a long delay. When the Los Angeles County Fire Department was finally deployed, there were problems — the Department sent strike teams to Agoura Hills instead of Simi Hills, and at the lab site, there was no or little water, and poor cellphone reception. Eventually, these limitations impelled the firefighters to move their base of operations to a Ventura County fire station.

For the next few days, strong Santa Ana winds drove the fire into Bell Canyon, the Santa Monica Mountains, Oak Park, and finally Malibu. It burned 96,949 acres and destroyed 1,643 structures. It forced more than 295,000 people to flee from their homes and communities. The Woolsey fire killed three people (that we so far know of): Alfred De Ciutiis, Anthony Noubar Baklayan, and Shoushan Baklayan.

15.

The Santa Susana Field Laboratory is located on a brush- and weed-covered 2,668-acre parcel in Simi Hills. In the 1940s, North American Aviation believed it was an excellent choice for the siting of a nuclear power plant on account of its remoteness from populated areas. According to the most recent estimate, Simi Valley now houses approximately 125,613 people.

According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS), the lab site is contaminated with trichloroethylene, as well as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, heavy metals, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and perchlorate. Further, according to the BAS, “[a] $40 million, multi-year radiation survey by the Environmental Protection Agency found hundreds of Santa Susana locations contaminated with radionuclides, including strontium 90, cesium 137, and plutonium 239.”

On the Boeing web page, Boeing explains that, after the Woolsey fire, a study conducted by an independent and State-certified laboratory detected no man-made radionuclides.

In December 2018, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control issued a statement indicating that the Woolsey fire did not poison the folks of Simi Valley, Ventura, or Los Angeles.

No radiation or hazardous materials from SSFL were detected in communities following the Woolsey Fire.

16.

Some people do not believe these reports. One prominent critic is Daniel Hirsch, the retired director of the Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Hirsch complains that the California studies were taken after the fire, when any and all blighted smoke would have already disappeared. He also asserts that the Department of Toxic Substances Control did not test their air, ash, and soil samples for radioactivity at all. He wonders how inspectors found no contamination when Santa Susana had long been known as a contaminated site.

17.

When wildfires rage over radioactive lands, weeds and brush present some of the greatest dangers. Radioactive isotopes sink into groundwater, which is then tapped by groundcover. When fire spreads to these plants, they may discharge the radiation into the air as they burn.

18.

The Santa Susana Lab was built and its toxic remnants have languished amid the chaparral-covered Simi Hills, less than an hour away from the location of the long-gone deadly zanjas, of Lachenais’ forgotten lynching, and of the hushed rooms where Fred Eaton and William Mulholland plotted out the water wars.

Chaparral is a fire-responder. In the spring following the Woolsey fire, poppies peeked out from its biome. The plant’s hard, green, waxy leaves have begun to grow again in Simi Valley’s defiled and blackened lands. Its deep roots still plunge into rock and search out the invisible groundwater, the way they always have.

Wildflowers were not the only thing to follow the Woolsey fire. So did mudslides, caused by the burnt earth’s erosion and record-breaking storms that soaked Los Angeles in December 2018. The resulting torrents proved particularly threatening to people living in the fragile tents that compose the homeless encampments scattered across L.A. County.

Santa Ana winds often fan the flames and allow blazes to rage across Southern California in the fall, before the winter rains. After the mudslides carve the hills, the remaining bare soil resembles a desolate moonscape. Cold-weather downpours course through the valleys, absorbing the pollution and toxins that have collected in the earth.

The hazards created by Santa Susana became especially dire after the Woolsey fire, as the blaze charred pipes and treatment systems that had been designed to corral contaminated rainwater before it coursed down the hill. Boeing records reveal that in the three months following the December rains, chemicals and radioactive materials poured from the site at levels that exceeded state safety standards. In November 2019, NBC4 reported that while Boeing would ordinarily have had to pay as much as $154,250 in fines for these violations, the penalty was cut to $28,000 to recognize Boeing’s lack of fault for a natural disaster.

19.

It seems that Southern California is an inhospitable place for most living things except for chaparral because it is hot, it is sere, its rains won’t fall, and if they do, the storms come in the form of Biblical deluges that arrive complete with plague. It’s also said around these parts that the region’s fires and floods do not discriminate. But these observations are not perfectly accurate. Poor and middle class people as well as people of color are at greater risk from the dangers caused by the river, the drought, the dam, the floods, the lab, the poisons, and the greed that grows in this beautiful place.

The people are agitating for change. In September 2018, 20 sign-hoisting residents of Simi Valley and nearby Chatsworth gathered on Valley Circle Boulevard to call for the cleanup of Santa Susana; they were supported by the honks of commuters. In October of that year, 30 activists of the Simi and San Fernando Valleys held an action in front of Governor Newsom’s L.A. office, calling for the site’s remediation. And in July 2019, 200 protesters gathered at Simi Valley’s Rancho Tapo Community Park to paint commemorative rocks that would serve as a memorial to the SSFL’s workers; this event drew attention because Kim and Kourtney Kardashian, who live close to the site, attended.

In September 2019, then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry visited Santa Susana. He took a fact-finding tour around the portion of the land that the Department of Energy has been ordered to remediate. When asked about his objectives, Perry didn’t make any specific plans, or raise anyone’s hopes with promises. He said, instead, that he didn’t want to get into the details, but just understand the history of the site. Yet, this gesture did presage some small progress: In May 2020, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control and the DOE agreed to demolish ten buildings in Area IV of the SSFL, so as to guard against the spread of toxins and radionuclides that may occur during the next wildfire and storm cycle.

Still, this is a far cry from complete remediation. “The surrounding communities have waited a long time for decisive action,” Governor Newsom said, at the news of the DOE’s decision. “Today’s order represents a new and important chapter toward the full cleanup.”

20.

In 2019, climate scientists reported that the fire season in California, which had formerly been concentrated in the fall months, is now expected to extend into the winter. So, from now on, people will be on high alert from the deepest heat of the summer to the chill bright months. This constant vigilance leaves locals with a sense of unease; of grief. History assures us that terror and disparity have always sat side-by-side in Southern California, even if such marvels feel unprecedented. Flight from superfires, poisonous air, tainted water, and now other contagions, has become our way of life.

* * *

Yxta Maya Murray is a writer and law professor at Loyola Law School. Her novel, Art Is Everything, is forthcoming in February, and her book of short fiction, The World Doesn’t Work That Way, but It Could, is out now.

* * *

Editor: Ben Huberman Factchecker: Nina Zweig

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courage-a-word-of-justice · 6 years ago

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SSSS.Gridman 3 - 4 | Double Decker 5 - 6 | Golden Kamuy 15 - 16 | Zombieland Saga 4 - 5 | Merc Storia 3 - 4

Gridman 3

Samurai Calibur is literally what pulled me back into the show – after all, he’s an indicator that despite this show’s serious demeanour, it is campy at heart. So it’s great to see him have a big role, even if he has to look stupid to do so.

Uh…by the way, kaiju (Anti?). What’s so cool about Wolverine blades? I mean, Wolverine himself has healing factor to back that up, but you’re just a kaiju…

That star explosion! There’s the Trigger we know and love!

“A kaiju that eats breakfast with me.”

I always love how anime deal with isolation through framing and other visual techniques. In this case, it’s Utsumi and Rikka in two mirrors of different shapes.

“…over, right?” I thought, as Utsumi said, “…disbanded.” – Close enough.

Literally everyone in this show has blue eyes. It’s striking, but it’s a bit much…? I personally like a mix of eye colours for characters, especially those eyes which seem to have flecks of different colours in them. Not that I’ve ever had an excuse to give any character I’ve created eyes like that (since it’s easier to describe single-coloured eyes), but it would be nice to have an opportunity to. Update: Apparently it’s a homage to something. A Transformers thing, actually.

This ED…hmm, it kinda looks like the Sarazanmai ads I’ve seen around lately. Just without the stylised background people and with Akane and Rikka.

Double Decker 5

“The Derick Special!” – Welp, aside from forgetting the E in “potatoes”, they got the spelling right, LOL.

I wonder if Kirill’s sister looks anything like him?

…Hmm. I noticed the license plate on that blue car has BNY. Maybe it stands for “bunny” or “Barnaby”?

*Kirill headbutts Doug* - Well…uh, that’s one way to use your head…

“My first partner died.” – Wait, but if that’s (Doug’s first partner) not Derick…then who is it??? The one before Derick? Update: Yep, I was right.

I just realised the motorbike (? car?) Max rides has her name on the license plate. At least in the ED it does.

It seems like the next episode is a breather ep…hmm.

Golden Kamuy 15

Kibushi is number 8 on this page.

“Bat man”…? Like the superhero?

I can’t believe I actually don’t mind the Blingee fire at this moment in the season…urgh. Why did I just say that? I might regret it later…

Oh my gosh…woodcock birds are adorable!

Inkarmat likes Cikapasi’s cover story? Even the bit about…boob-grabbing…?

I like the technique where it appears Nagakura and Toshizou have deaged. It really gives the scene emotional impact and emphasises the fact this episode is called “Let’s Talk About the Past”.

Zombieland Saga 4

I always imagine Lily’s voice to be extremely high pitched. So high pitched, it’s almost silly…but maybe that’s just what happens when I turn off the volume and try to imagine their voices that way.

Chatsumi means “tea picking”. As in picking tea leaves.

Bikubiku just means Junko is trembling from fear. She probably has a fear of heights…

Hey wait, I thought slapping Saganship Z on people who aren’t zombies is called “administering medicine”…

The CGI…I don’t think it’s entirely hideous, but it’s still vaguely obvious.

Marutchi/Tamatchi -> Yes, it’s another Tamagotchi joke from Saki.

Merc Storia 3

Oh my goodness…this (the queen) is the fairy I got hyped for way back when this show first had its ED showcased! She’s basically the anime version of a Shirley Barber fairy! She’s gorgeous!

Princess, didn’t the tale of Excalibur teach you not to pull swords from stones?

There are a lot of princesses in this, to the point where it makes me feel like a kid again. Then again, all good anime makes me giggly like a kid. Not to mention this actually is aimed at kids…

Who’s a healer, Merc? Jamo? (Yeah, yeah, I’m kidding, but seriously, get Merc to do a better indication of who she’s talking about.)

Oh, how did I not think of this? Yuu’s name is Yuu because he’s you, geddit? The player character?...Okay, stop booing…

Seriously, all the fairies, regardless of their gender, are gorgeous…! Except the bartender and the butler. The bartender looks like Tank from Brave Beats and the butler’s just an old guy. The background characters are only decent looking, too, but I’m talking about (most of) the main characters here. The princess is kinda cute, but not enough to awaken a moe instinct in me, y’know?

I didn’t notice this until now, but Paristos has pointy ears…hmm.

Wait, that was a dude fairy??? The black one, i.e. “one that knows the land”??? Update: Sorry. I listened to his voice and then realised…that is a dude. Sorry. He even kind of sounds like Ume…Update 2: A-hah! That’s why The One That Knows the Land (that is literally what he’s credited as) sounded familiar. It was Junichi Suwabe! Update 3: His name is in the next ep, it’s Zephrodai.

SSSS.Gridman 4

I noticed Akane has a Surume card. It’s probably a pun on Suika (Watermelon) cards. Apparently the pun is that tapping the card on and off is like water swishing (sui sui), hence the name. Update: It would be also nice to say they were a pun on Hong Kong’s Octopus cards, but the visuals on the cards are all wrong…

See? They’re (Namiko and Hass) using their phones like normal kids. So why didn’t Rikka remember to use her phone last ep?

Rumour has it Borr is a dude, which makes the fact he’s questioning why girls like older guys make a lot more sense. Then again, you could just headcanon him as a lesbian instead. I’m not going to stop you from thinking that way if you do.

Honest to stars above, this feels like Kiznaiver Round 2. I didn’t mind Kiznaiver but though it could be better. The drama felt a little too…melodramatic, y’know?

See? This episode just proves Calibur is best boi…until further notice, when they introduce that other Neon Genesis bishonen for real.

So if Borr -> Buster Borr, Max -> Tracto Max and Samurai Calibur -> Calibur, then Sky Vitter…either Sky or Vit. I already know the answer is “Vit” because I saw it on the wiki, but it makes a bit more sense now. Anyways, I was wondering…what happened to the 3 dudes from Arcadia? Max is the strongest, eh? So many questions, not enough time, y’know???

Double Decker! 6

“Good Noodles”, LOL.

The line that appears when the subs say “Let’s take this to our car” actually says something along the lines of, “For the moment, let’s take this to our car, shall we?”

Interestingly, the word “guinea pig” (as in, the “we’re being tested on” sort) translates directly – you can read the word morumotto (guinea pig) in the text.

Maybe I’m not familiar with terms aside from keiji/keibu etc. for policemen, but I’ve never seen a policeman being referred to as “omeguri-san”…

If we’re talking about noticing things…a post for this episode already spoilt for me that “Kirill now has a brother”, although I don’t know whether that comment was made in jest/deception or not. Also, that “sister” sure didn’t have any…er, secondary reproductive characteristics on the torso, to put it lightly.

Reminder, dear cowatchers: Doug is…kind of…an asshole.

*Milla’s disappearance involves getting on one of those double decker buses you see around Lisvaletta* - Welp, that puts another meaning to the name “Double Decker”, eh?

Apple Bieber (LOL) is so tsundere when people actually call him “Doctor”, haha.

Holy sisters, Batman! Milla even sounds like a man. I may be terrible at identifying voice actors from their voices alone, but heck if I can’t tell this “Milla” is a man! (The voice of “Milla” sounds familiar…who is it, though? I’ll skip forward and check. Update: Okay, it’s a name I don’t recognise, but it is a dude! The VA’s name is Yuki Fujiwara. But now that that’s established…I like Valery (sic…?) already. He’s definitely my type~.)

Soooooooooo…yeah. Kirill really does have a brother. Sorry for the spoilers.

Golden Kamuy 16

…Wait, so he’s (Shiraishi) actually getting captured this time?

I find it interesting there is a Japanese equivalent to “Kamuy” which means “residence of the gods”, to translate it somewhat loosely.

Shiraishi had such stupid faces in everyone’s heads…LOL.

I find Tsurumi wearing a proper outfit coloured like the 7th division (albeit more Chinese-looking) kinda strange. Tsurumi suits red more, methinks.

Opium, eh? I assume this talk about poppies and England has something to do with the Opium Wars.

Arisaka’s probably as bad as Brook from One Piece…at least, when it comes to skull jokes in the OP manga. Or like a group of dads having a meeting.

Nikaidou’s so petty…LOL. But it is a good idea to weaponise a fake leg – I mean, Toshizou could have the same advantage if he put a sword in his cane…but I think Toshizou thinks too highly of his Izuminokami Kanesada to do such a thing.

I laughed pretty hard when I learnt Ogata is meant to be part of the 27th. Probably because it wasn’t much of a coincidence in the first place.

Zombieland Saga 5

Wowee, what just happened to Tatsumi’s leg??? “The second you let your guard down, it can all fall apart!” – I think he was talking more about his leg rather than competitive baseball…Update: I swore the ball went through his leg. If you didn’t interpret it the same way, then…sorry.

So I heard you like KFC. Well, we’ll just grab Saga’s equivalent to KFC so you can have chicken in your anime while you eat chicken…or something like that…?

Shouldn’t that be “principles of Drive-In Tori”?

The fish eyecatch seems to involve a Karatsu-kun-chi…according to the banner in the back.

Google Translate tells me “Bonjour, Saga jeune” means something to the effect of “Hello, Saga youngster.”

They really like their live-action segments on this show, huh?

Seriously, which of these girls does Ookoba-san remember??? Is he the driver from episode 1’s Truck-kun? Update: It’s Junko, so that makes sense. If it were Policeman A recognising Junko, Ai or Sakura…we’d be in trouble.

I forgot why they were panicking, but then I remembered…they didn’t have their makeup on. Ah.

Eh? You’re kidding…the Gatalympics is legit!

Yugiri literally poledanced on that rope! Yipe, that’s stiff competition…

What is Tae eating in these in-between scenes, anyway…?

I believe I cannnnnn…*music cuts immediately* Fall…So much for the “I Believe I Can Fly” parody…

Merc Storia 4

Gah, that necklace looks like a Sims gem…

Okay, if I figured out what the next country is it won’t be so interesting. It’s the “country of the clan of few people”.

You can see Salodeah in the ED…and Fruedling (sp???)…but there are some other characters you don’t see in these fairy episodes. Now I’d like to meet the lady riding the spider and the blonde guy (you see them in the same screenshot). You can also see the dog girl from the animal in the ED (I forgot her name though, LOL). I’d also like to see the angel country…

I just realised the next ep previews are called Merc Yokoku (Next Ep Preview) Storia…hmm.

#simulcast commentary #merc storia #merc storia: the apathetic boy and the girl in a bottle #zombieland saga #Merc Storia: Mukiryoku Shonen to Bin no Naka no Shoujo #Golden Kamuy #SSSS.Gridman #double decker #Double Decker! Doug and Kirill #Chesarka watches Merc Storia #Chesarka watches ZLS #Chesarka watches GK #Chesarka watches SSSS.Gridman #Chesarka watches Double Decker!

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lodelss · 4 years ago

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Fire/Flood: A Southern California Pastoral

Yxta Maya Murray | Longreads | August 2020 | 4,990 words (20 minutes)

— with thanks to Dr. Alex Pivovaroff

Los Angeles has always lacked an adequate supply of indigenous water.

This problem brings out the worst in its settlers, who adapt to the landscape with as much scorched-earth ingenuity as does the chaparral.

These efforts did not do enough to quench the ever-growing thirst of Southern California.

In 1902 and then again in 1904, cattle began to die.

Eventually, though, the word got out.

Mulholland nevertheless ignored the troubling condition of the area and proceeded to build in the canyon. The St. Francis Dam became operational in 1926.

It began to develop fissures and leaks within a year.

Mulholland then stepped back into his chauffeur-driven Marmon sedan and returned to Los Angeles, where they had lunch at about 2 p.m.

At the coroner’s inquest, investigators asked Mulholland why he did not react to the seepage Harnischfeger had shown him on the morning of the catastrophe.

“The only ones I envy about this thing are the ones who are dead,” Mulholland said.

Kickstart your weekend reading by getting the week’s best Longreads delivered to your inbox every Friday afternoon.

10.

Between 2011 and 2014, a Cal State Northridge graduate student in archaeology named Ann Stansell compiled the names of the victims of the St. Francis Dam’s collapse.

Some of the names are: Luz Alvarado, Jesus Alvarez, Clinton Anderson, and Georgie Basolo.

And: Maria DeJesus Carrillo, Hipolito Cerna, Homer Coe, Walter Colburn, Marguerite Cowden, and Rosarita Erratchuo.

And: Señora Figueroa, Lorenzo Florez, Mrs. Forrester, John Harold Frame, Elizabeth “Tootsie” Garcia, Charles Glenn, John Earl Gold, Richard Gottardi, and Esther Luna.

And: Jose Martinez, Paul Massetti, Vidae Louise Mathews, Charles Edgar McCarty, Teviarro Monorez, Roy Morrow, and Francisco Ochoa.

11.

The Federal Government has assumed responsibility for drought relief and it is important to our State that such drought relief follow sufferers when they leave drought areas, he said, in 1936.

Chairman Legg either lied when he said this, or did not know what he was talking about.

12.

Due to the explosive advances in nuclear science in the 1950s, the problems of drought, flood, atrocity, and inequality would intensify in California.

It has been estimated that the July 1959 incident expelled 240 times the amount of radioactivity as Three Mile Island.

I’m here tonight to beg of you not to put groundwater in our homes … (and) keep our future generations safe, she said.

13.

Interviewee #258 also said that he had once seen a brushfire in Area IV, which once held the SRE.

14.

The flames spread quickly to the surrounding weeds and brush.

15.

On the Boeing web page, Boeing explains that, after the Woolsey fire, a study conducted by an independent and State-certified laboratory detected no man-made radionuclides.

In December 2018, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control issued a statement indicating that the Woolsey fire did not poison the folks of Simi Valley, Ventura, or Los Angeles.

No radiation or hazardous materials from SSFL were detected in communities following the Woolsey Fire.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

* * *

Editor: Ben Huberman Factchecker: Nina Zweig

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