For most of his life, Paul Pino believed his community had dodged the bullet when it came to nuclear fallout. It wasn’t until he’d retired from teaching high school history that he learned that his home, Carrizozo, had in fact experienced radiation fallout on a July morning in 1945.
Then the pieces started coming together. He’d seen family members die of illnesses that can be linked to radiation exposure.
Nearly 80 years ago, the U.S. government detonated a bomb as part of the Trinity Test in the Tularosa Basin that has been having reverberating consequences for the residents ever since.
As a teacher, Pino had shown his class a film that spoke about how trucks had been sent to Carrizozo to evacuate people. But, ultimately, no one was evacuated. He had believed that meant the radiation didn’t reach Carrizozo.
“I told my students, ‘Wow, look, my community was spared,’” he said.
Then he learned that the Geiger counters—instruments used to measure radiation—actually went off the scale due to the levels. …