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ST. GEORGE - There is nothing divine about Divine Strake to Iris Mortensen.
The St. George resident believes her veterinarian husband received the cancer that killed him from conducting autopsies on sheep found dead in Millard County in the 1950s.
Mortensen blames radiation from the nuclear tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s for killing the sheep and infecting her husband. Now she's voicing her concerns about Divine Strake, the non-nuclear blast the federal government plans for the same test site.
"It's insanity," she said.
Mortensen was one of about 300 residents of southwestern Utah who gathered at the Dixie Center in St. George on Thursday night to ask questions, voice concerns and hear information from officials with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which dreamed up the test.
The proposed explosion would involve 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and cause a blast that many fear would throw into the atmosphere soil contaminated by earlier nuclear blasts at the test site. The tainted dust, critics say, would again blanket southwestern Utah with unacceptable amounts of radiation.
Nuclear tests 50 years ago are blamed for cancers in the population in southwestern Utah. Those sickened by the nuclear testing in the 1950s are known as Downwinders because southwestern Utah was downwind from the blasts.
So far, the environmental assessment being conducted is cautiously optimistic that the test would be safe, say federal officials. But no matter how convincing the officials sounded, Mortensen and many others remain skeptical of Divine Strake's safety.
"After the damage from the first tests, I have a hard time believing the leopard has changed its spots," said Mortensen.
Near the end of Thursday's meeting, some residents stood on chairs to tell of relatives who they claim died of radiation exposure from earlier testing. They vowed not to let such a tragedy happen again. Among those remembering loved ones was former Salt Lake City television weatherman Bob Welti.
"My wife of 57 years died from cancer one week ago to the hour from radiation poison," said Welti. "If the blast is so safe, why not do it in Washington, D.C.?" Welti's comments were met with applause. He said that while in military training in Denver in the 1950s, his wife, Georgia, and their children, stayed with her family in Circleville in Piute County. That's where he claims she was affected by the testing.
"She'd shake nuclear ash out of the kids' diapers," he recalled.
Downwinder Ilene Jones said that in 1956, the year she was born, her family went to an "Easter picnic" to witness a blast deemed safe by the government in an area near the test site. She blames radiation exposure from the blasts for her breast cancer and the cancer that killed her grandmother.
"There were no signs warning us to stay away," she said.
Jones is convinced that the Divine Strake blast would send up a contaminated cloud that would again make people ill.
"I know beyond a doubt it is still hot [at the Test Site]," said Jones.