Tina Cordova

It wasn't just the girls from the dance camp who were getting sick either.

Take, for example, Tina Cordova, who grew up in the small town of Tularosa, New Mexico, 40 miles from where the explosion took place.

Although she wasn't even born yet when the event took place, her family, who lived in and around Tularosa, New Mexico, suffered a myriad of cancers after the incident, like stomach, breast, and even brain cancer.

At least 10 members of her family were diagnosed with the illness, and unfortunately, some didn't survive their fight, like Tina's father, who developed prostate and tongue cancer.

I didn't interject jokes between the nuclear war and Gaza and say, well, wasn't that a laugh riot? And then at the end, I did kind of more of a pitch for we got to connect to our common humanity here.

And there was a folk singer, Paul Pino, who works with Tina Cordova, the Tularosa Basin Downwinders, who did a wonderful song.

And then also he threw plowshares in the lyrics just for out of honor or whatever.

So he had done that.

Three weeks ago, for Nuclear Hot Seat number 791, I reported from the Samuel Lawrence Foundation San Onofre Symposium, a full-day event covering aspects of the problems with the decommissioning and storage of the nuclear waste on site.

You can find that full report, episode number 791, on the website.

But I want to share a brief interview I was able to get with one of our most important spokespeople, Tina Cordova.

She is a downwinder from the Tularosa Basin in New Mexico, which is near the Trinity Test Site.