PALOMARES
Having finally confessed March 2 that the package, lost over Spain in a B-52 collision with a tanker plane last January 17, contained four H-bombs, the State Department appears to hope that the unscheduled incident ~~ so damaging to the carefully cultivated public image of an all-wise, all-protective Uncle Sam -- can now be quietly filed away under the heading of "slip ups, past and forgotten." It has been proved that plutonium, one of the deadliest poisons known, can be accidentally scattered over fields and towns without the least harm -- if it's done by the Pentagon. Moreover, the U.S. government has scraped up 1,500 tons* of "earth and vegetation" to be shipped to the Savannah River nuclear plant near Aiken, South Carolina, which is presumably equipped to get rid of the radioactivecontaminated stuff. Finally, the U.S. ambassador to Spain frolicked *The Maroh 4 Le Monde reports the amount is 6,000 tons.
publicly with the Spanish Minister of Information for a few minutes in the chilly water at the Palomares beach to show how safe every=_ thing is.
Unfortunately, despite the soothing State Department propaganda, all is not yet well in and around the small Spanish town. And not only because one of the H-bombs has not yet been located. For an informative.report on this, we are indebted to the special correspondent. of the Paris daily Le Monde [March 6-7].
He quotes an eyewitness on how it all began:
"For years, at ten. o'clock in the morning, we could see how the. planes were supplied. On January 17 four planes were flying over the village. Two of them fell in flames; the others managed to escape.. We found the bodies of seven of the crew and we saw four survivors parachute down. We also saw some yellow parachutes falling like torches. Only later did we learn that atomic bombs were attached to them. From that time on we haven't had any peace here." ;
The correspondent describes the area as a barren one. Only a badly rutted dirt road leads to the little farming town with its patches of land where tomatoes, beans and cucumbers are normally grown. .
“Why , before the Americans came," one of the inhabitants told Le Monde's correspondent, "the place was so quiet. you could hardly hear a fly buzzing. Now we are almost all emigrants and we worked . hard in France or South America so we could buy a little piece of land from the people in Cuevas de Almenzora [the town five. miles away]. And now what is going to happen to us?"
Eight hundred Americans are camping in the outskirts of the village. A fleet of twenty naval craft with 2,000 crewmen are standing offshore in the Mediterranean, "On the road leading through the. village to the contaminated area, heavy-weight trucks go and come, blazing red tank trucks, blue transport trucks, jeeps and tractors. They are working on the contaminated area, keeping it sprinkled, they told us, to. hold the dust down, and putting the soil into big sealed cases to be shipped to the United States to the nuclear plant at Aiken. The American soldiers, in ranks of twenty to sixty, shoulder to shoulder, are scraping an area of more than ten square kilometers Labout 2 490 acres]. They move ahead a step at a time, pushing over all the stones and picking up the smallest piece, the tiniest bit of metal. Behind them come men. carrying Geiger counters. The soldiers working on the contaminated land wear white coveralls, high rubber boots, a gauze mask to protect their mouth and nose; helicopters skim the ground, shaking the walls of the small white houses. The bars used to open only in the evenings. Now they open before sunrise. Work begins at six in the morning." a
As for the villagers, they have not.been drawn ‘into this frenetic activity. "People here aren't working," a peasant told the correspondent. "The whole day we move around like ghosts. Work? Why? At first, we couldn't. Now.they've given us back our land, but how
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are we going to grow anything if we don't even know if anybody will buy our crops? We've been cursed. Who is going to convince the buyers that we're not contaminated? If at least the papers would come out. clearly. No, it was thanks to foreign radio stations that we learned some of the details."
Another peasant ‘said: "Besides, they haven't given us any indemnity yet. We're only poor peasants. The Americans aren't in any hurry. But the bank's not waiting and it's presenting us with notes that we have to pay. If at least we could leave here! But who would buy our land? Nobody."
- ‘Le Monde summarized other remarks: "We were out for more than twenty-four hours, picking up bodies, and walking around the wreckage of the planes on contaminated ground. The doctors came later. When they detected dangerous radioactivity, they even burned the shoes and-clothes of a lot of us. And we were wearing these same clothes © for three days, playing with our children. Nobody told us about an atomic bomb or radioactivity. Who can tell us that our children won't show up with | something wrong? If at least they had given us clear information.
“In the fishing town of Aguilas, 12% miles away, the’ story is Similar. It was some of the Aguilas fishermen, who make a living netting shrimps and red mullet,that rescued the airmen who parachuted into the Mediterranean. "At first," said one of them, "nobody would buy fish from us. They said it was radioactive. We gave it away. My children and I ate it; we had no choice...Now it's still worse. People have begun to buy again. Shrimps have gone up again to 160 pesetas a kilo. But what has happened now is that nobody is fishing any more." a
They haven't gone fishing since one of the bosses, Francisco Orts, fishing outside the restricted zone, found he could not pull in his néts; they were too heavy. He was able to tow them to ‘one of the American ships standing ‘by. :
"The Americans immediately took the boat over," said one of Orts' comrades, "and for four days they stayed at anchor out to sea without a single Spaniard being able to come near. A helicopter ‘flew away with the device they found in the net. The Americans said it was a block of cement, but nobody believes then. *
"They gare 30, 000 pesetas to the Catalans to pay for the damaged nets...And ‘they restricted five more miles along the coast, exactly where you find shrimp. It meant ruin!
"Since then we have had to fish in a very narrow area, so no
*From this report, it would seem that two of the H-bombs fell onland, setting off the ordinary explosives used as a percussion for the plutonium trigger. This blew open the bomb casings. The other two H-bombs, it can be speculated, fell into the Mediterranean, one of them later becoming entangled in a fisherman's nets and thus. being retrieved. The fourth H-bomb has not yet been located.
one is. catching a thing. And they say that the Americans are going to stay. here a year. Up to: now no one has given us any idemnity. Does | that. seem right to you? What are the authorities doing about it?" —
For the past five years, an attempt has been made to puild up the region for tourism.» But this, too, has been affected. A realestate agent told the Le Monde correspondent. that foreigners ¢ are now beginning to draw back and. to demand health guarantees. .
"As long as “things remain unsure," he said, uy don't think anyone will venture to come for a vacation on this beach. After this business. only .a fool would get the idea of coming here to rest. Tourists will go through maybe; but not to stop...I don't think so. So | far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't bring my wife or _ boy to a place like this. ;
The - general feeling of the area was expressed by the owner of. a small boat in Palomares: "Bad luck has hit this village. Cursed be the bomb and the one who invented it.". ne -
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