Our query last week to the City for information was responded to, and yesterday, we ran a story accordingly based on the information from the city provided to us….
A late afternoon development occurred this afternoon, in the continuing saga of the proposed Resolution to Protect the unborn ,which has NO power of law in Alamogordo.
The resolution, with no power of law and defended through true hostility by appointed commissioner, Karl Melton, and his domestic partner, Candidate, John Block via a slam campaign against a young woman battling cancer; the mayor, myself and others continues to offer twists and turns.
Late this afternoon we received an email from the city clerk saying…
“in the emails that were pulled for me, regarding “any correspondence from any member of the public requesting Mr. Melton to place the “Sanctuary for the Unborn” resolution on the agenda? the attached email was not among the emails pulled. I have attached the email.”
See below…
Mr. Melton texted me this evening via instant messenger to ensure I received the email and questioned rather we had journalistic integrity to report it.
Unlike his partner, John Blocks propaganda engine, which to date has not retracted the lies about the mayor; we do have integrity, thus we are reporting we have this NEW updated information and are sharing it accordingly.
We asked Mr. Melton if there were any other correspondence and if this correspondence was from a constituent in his district?
Fact she is not in his district thus cannot vote for him, thus not a direct constituent. She is a resident of Commission District 6 and NOT of his district 3.
His response:
“She is an Alamogordo resident. I am not sure what district she is. I have never met her before she emailed me. Regardless she is not alone. I also received 91 other emails urging me to support the resolution once the special session was announced. Not to mention the countless face-to-face conversations I’ve had with constituents about this.”
Mrs. Caraway is a business professional and a Christian but is not represented by Mr Melton. Her correspondence provided to us today, is as follows…
The font text of the email and the signature is inconsistent, however there is now a record of an out of District email received.
The fact the email, suddenly appeared after the story broke on the duplicity of this duo serving in office is entertaining.
The email was suddenly found and suddenly emailed to us and Mr. Melton wanted to ensure we received it.
Melton via text: ”I assume you got the updated information from Rachel today? O”
In asking why it suddenly appeared his response: “The email did not originally come up when the City’s IT contractors did a search. That’s it. Mistakes happen. Not everything is a giant conspiracy. All your other questions are irrelevant to the subject of the conversation and frankly are overly personal. It’s no business of yours. I’m just wondering if you will own up to your own ambitions of nonbiased, objective reporting, or if you are going to let your feud with John impact how honest your articles are.”
We will trust it was just an “mistake by the IT Department” and we have no reason to feud. We just want an understanding of events that are transpiring via our elected representatives.
So Mr Melton did NOT lie so to speak, he parsed words and received one email from a resident that cannot vote for him, and the the Melton/Block duo went on the offense.
Does one email from out of one’s District truly demand a response of such magnitude? I only hope when we make a request to Mr Melton he and his partner are equally ambitious in resolving our concern for action by the city.
Notice no correspondence of a response to the citizen was provided to us?
However Mr. Melton did respond by seeking a way to revoke the business licenses of any business in the city that may conduct abortions. That is illegal verses state law but he did ask staff to review options…
Interesting wording in his request “to NOT issue or renew a business license to any establishment that performs an abortion.”
The hospital is a business, that operates with a business license. A doctor may be a resident licensed doctor with a business license of Alamogordo but have to perform an emergency abortion in Las Cruces or at the local hospital, based on what Melton set forth, his business license to have a practice in Alamogordo would be revoked. A doctors office or a hospital is an establishment with a business license.
If Mr Melton were allowed to move forward with an ordinance and by state law he cannot, he would have proposed an ordinance, that would close down the hospital, if a life saving abortion were to transpire protecting the woman
Regardless of the semantics, Mr Melton wants to justify himself based on one email from outside his district. We stand corrected, there was one email.
The term constituency is commonly used to refer to an electoral district and only those who voted for a certain candidate within their district.
The terms (election) precinct and election district are more common in American English. Mr. Melton represents the constituents of District 3. The mayor represents the constituents of ALL of the city of Alamogordo.
We stand by the assertion this was not an issue that should have been brought before the city.
We stand by the assertion that the Block/Melton duo drove this debate and issue not by the overwhelming demand of majority of their constituents but based upon a personal agenda and apparently one out of district email.
Mr Melton alluded to me that he perceives us in a feud with his sleeping partner, Mr. Block. That is not the case. We are seeking to understand why the duo moved here and why this issue was so important to create such a fight, now as the duos first act at legislation locally.
We asked the question ,how much money he or Mr. Block were receiving from pro-life interests? He ducked the question. NO Response to the money questions.
Melton in his dialog with us suggested” I was really hoping after you posted your “tips for civil discourse” that this would turn out differently. I’m sorry you feel the need to withhold information because of how John writes his articles.”
His dialog is a suggestion we would not share the new information provided by the city clerk to us today.
We are indeed sharing that information and the reader can and will make their own conclusions.
And yes, we still hope that the duo of Melton/Block, mature as elected officials that they would retract the lies about the mayor, offer apologies to the individuals that differ from them but are active in the political process, and learn from this saga.
We hope they will follow the 10 tips for civil discourse and grow into their positions, as professionals, not ego driven advisories to compromise.
We need elected representatives to represent and to succeed not to divide but to drive collaboration not Division.
Can Melton/Block grow into professionals? Can Melton/Block practice civil discourse?
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Congratulations are in order to Mr. Karl Melton and candidate John Block who prevailed in maintaining the “Sanctuary City of the Unborn” resolution that was submitted by them via a “special city commission meeting.”
Per a press release which was released from the city of Alamogordo at 3:50 pm today Alamogordo, NM Tuesday, September 13, 2022…
“A petition to take Resolution 2022-38, passed by City Commission on August 2, 2022, at a Special Meeting, for referendum was filed with the City Clerk on September 1, 2022.
In accordance with NMSA 1978 § 3-1-5. Petitions, examinations of signatures; purging; judicial review, and in consultation with the Secretary of State and New Mexico Municipal League, the petition did not meet the statutory requirements.
As such, the city will take no additional action on this matter.”
This recap is being researched at 11:33 pm and a press release above from the city of Alamogordo was posted to the city website and Facebook 7 hours ago.
A small group of citizens led by a young lady fighting cancer, Ashlie Meyers, decided they would start a petition to gather signatures in hopes of forcing a special election to determine if the resolution should stand. The group gathered over 507 valid signatures of 589 needed to be turned in, to the county clerk, 10 days ago, to verify.
Tuesday, the group of petitioners learned the fate of their petition, first via a post by John Block that predated the city of Alamogordo’s official Facebook post and release by 1 hour. The city clerk’s office issued a letter, via Facebook, one hour after Blocks post, stating that the petition did not garner enough valid signatures to force the measure on a special election ballot.
Case closed? Maybe, maybe not.
What has occurred is domestic partners, Melton and Block have deeply divided the community into factions of distrust and bitterness verses uniting the community around issues that need community collaboration such as crime prevention and business development.
The group had faced huge pushback from conservative pundits, including John Block, a blogger and the GOP nominee for state rep in Otero County. Block also attended the Jan. 6 Capitol riot but never faced charges. Block’s domestic partner, Karl Melton, was recently appointed to a vacancy on the Alamogordo City Commission.
In an email sent out to supporters today, Block said “The pro-abort radicals are likely going to show up in full force and try and intimidate the commissioners, spewing vicious personal attacks and tired anti-life talking points.”
During the August 3 meeting Block made false claims that there are no medical reasons why a woman would ever need an abortion.
Access to abortion services is limited in Otero County and Alamogordo. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights advocacy organization, 91 percent of NM counties had “no clinics that provided abortions” in 2017, and 48 percent of New Mexico women lived in counties without clinics. Both of those percentages are higher than national averages despite Block’s claim that “NM taxpayers forked over a staggering amount for abortions in the past two years.”
Ashlie Meyers supporters spoke at the city commission meeting Tuesday night expressing dissatisfaction with their loss with them reviewing rather they have any options to appeal the decision of signatures that were rejected.
LBGTQ Republican candidate John Block posted a story via Pinon Post, 1 hour before the city posted their position on their website. The timing of that post vía the Piñón Press one hour prior to the city releasing the official press release raises many legal questions.
Block titled the article in a maner that implies the activism of Ashley Meyers “failed miserably. “
Any public participation in political discourse regardless of the outcome should be applauded as that is the activism our founding fathers hoped for.
A diversity of dialog and debate leads to good governance.
Candidate Block then went on to attack the mayor, a news source operated by an Otero County Republican and gloated with glee verses covering a story with humility and grace as winners with grace and humility under God on their side.
“THE HUMBLE CHRISTIAN RECEIVES MORE GRACE.”-1 Peter 5:5
The 2 GOP, LBGTQ leaders, Melton and Block claim to be “fundamentalist Christian.” But as such does fundamentalism allow for a LBGTQ lifestyle? Does it allow one to pick and choose which biblical principles one will follow?
Their support of the “Sanctuary City for the Unborn” they claim, is led by their “Christian beliefs.” It would seem they are picking and choosing which of those “Christian” beliefs they choose to follow.
Living as an example of grace, in grace, and in humility apparently is not part of the example they choose to live by based upon the Piñon Post article posted today.
God does not want believers to live by law, but by the Holy Spirit. Whether someone is living by law (God’s Law or man-made laws) or by grace is determined by two key issues:
1. The issue of motivation: Why you do what you do?
Under law, a person works in order to earn the acceptance of God.
Under grace, a person trusts in Jesus Christ as his/her acceptance and works out of love and gratitude.
2. The issue of use of power or authority: How you do what you do?
Under law, a person lives from his own power and resources.
Under grace, a person lives by Christ’s life and power imparted by the Holy Spirit.
Humility and submission go hand in hand. God’s Word tells us that, as Christians, we are to submit to one another in lowliness of mind. “Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for ‘God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’” 1 Peter 5:5-6.
By being submissive and “clothing ourselves with humility” we can create peace and unity with the others.
We are not to be so proud and high up that we can’t accept correction or exhortation. Neither should we be of the mindset that our own opinions and thoughts always are better than the others.
Such thinking won’t lead us to any progress or unity in Christ.
Mr. Block in his Piñon Press post falsely claimed that the Mayor and Commissioner McDonald were “pro-abortion.” This is completely counter to statements either individual has made in the past. Both have expressed;” this issue is not an issue for the city to take on as it is out of the city legal schema of authority.” Few people are “pro-abortion or pro death. Even those pushing for the repeal of the resolution, most just felt the issue was out of scope of local political leadership based upon state law.
“Out of scope” is far different then “pro-abortion,” but at times personal bias in the cloud of holy war can fog the path to humility and grace.
Republican, LBGTQ Candidate Block posted “The pro-life measure passed in August with support from all but two apparently pro-abortion members, Mayor Susan Payne and Commissioner Sharon McDonald, on the seven-member commission.”
Knowing these individuals are public figures, he posted this FALSE statement which if they did not hold public office would be considered liable, slanderous and could negatively impact their private business and community relationships.
While the actions by Mr. Block and Mr. Melton might not be illegal given the mayor and commissioner are public figures, their false assertions are unethical and certainly not biblical in grace or humility.
“We are not to be so proud and high up that we can’t accept correction or exhortation. Neither should we be of the mindset that our own opinions and thoughts always are better than the others.”
While this LBGTQ political duo duped a large portion of the public into believing they were acting in good faith under the grace of God to protect the unborn; what they actually exposed was a lack of personal grace and humility under the teachings of God.
They showed how to further divide a community, rather then seek opportunities to unite it around meaningful legislation that has the power of law.
The resolution they supported has NO force of law and has NO legal authority to stop an abortion within Alamogordo. State law does not allow a local government from stopping an abortion.
Finally they demonstrated that they allowed their personal bias to get in the way of truth. Their attack on the mayor was unwarranted and unethical. They attack on an alternative news source and personal attack against the founder, further demonstrates their lack of tolerance of voices other then their own.
AlamogordoTownNews.com congratulates Mr Block and Mr Melton on “their victory.” We won’t disparage those of opinions different than ours with lies. We won’t dig into their past to discrete them.
Jesus taught in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25: 36) that people who help those in prison will go to Heaven. This is because Jesus identifies himself with the outcasts, including prisoners. Those who treat the outcasts well will have eternal life, which means they will go to Heaven.
Rehabilitation and forgiveness of past transgressions are the teachings of Christ.
We will however expose when a political leader acts in a manner that is unethical or represents statements such as those by the mayor falsely.
Lord Acton writes to Bishop Creighton in a series of letters concerning the moral problem of writing history about the Inquisition. Acton believes that the same moral standards should be applied to all men, political and religious leaders included, especially since, in his famous phrase, “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”
Mr. Melton and Mr Block, please act with humility and grace in your daily acts of leadership! Please embrace those that differ from you in opinions with seeking bridges of collaboration please act with maturity under grace and humility thus humanity. Please don’t fall in love with the corruption of power but act under the grace and humility of a loving God.
Congratulations, you may run a victory lap!!! But was it worth it? Does it feel victorious and is it an act of grace to go after a girl dying of cancer, Ashlie Meyer, who was following her conscious? Does it bring you joy to disparage the mayor and individuals investing in the growth of Alamogordo?
Are you happy you created the division felt within Alamogordo, a community faced with rising crime, businesses desperately seeking staff and crumbling infrastructure?
Was this highest and best use of the leadership pulpit and will this resolution success bring jobs, reduce crime and solve issues of business growth within Alamogordo?
—————————————————- Piñon Post story posted one hour prior to City sponsored statement posted to the public.
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Kirtland Air Force Base, which abuts and shares some runways with the Albuquerque airport, has become an important nuclear weapons complex. It hosts the Air Force’s Nuclear Weapons Center, Sandia National Laboratories, and what is probably the nation’s (and perhaps the world’s) largest repository of nuclear weapons, estimated at up to 2,500 warheads. Kirtland AFB is the third largest installation in Air Force Global Strike Command. (Others include Barksdale Air Force Base, Malmstrom Air Force Base, Minot Air Force Base, F. E. Warren Air Force Base.)
Alamogordo as a testing ground for military aircraft, drones and other top-secret programs and as the convergence point of Holloman Air Force Base, Fort Bliss, and White Sands Testing Grounds as such Alamogordo is also a strong potential target in the event of a superpower nuclear exchange.
Alamogordo, New Mexico located in the nearby Jornada del Muerto desert, the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range was the site of the world’s first nuclear explosion. The so-called “Trinity” Test was carried out as part of the Manhattan Project, a nuclear weapon research operation begun in 1939. The project took place simultaneously in several locations: the weapons were developed in Los Alamos, New Mexico; uranium-235 was enriched at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and plutonium-239 was produced at Hanford, Washington.
The desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico was chosen as the test site.
On July 14, 1945, the world’s first nuclear bomb, a plutonium implosion device code-named “The Gadget” was installed on top of a 30 m tower. The construction was equivalent to the one used for the “Fat Man” bomb, which was dropped on Nagasaki only a few weeks later. Scientists and military officers observed the test from a distance of 10–32 km.
On July 16, 1945, at 5:29:45 am the “Gadget” was detonated, with an explosive power equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT, causing a bright flash of light, a mushroom cloud that grew to a height of about 12 km, and a shock wave that was felt 250 km away from Ground Zero. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” were the famous words of J.R. Oppenheimer upon seeing the explosion.
Trinity was the first of more than 2,000 nuclear tests, which contaminated the world’s atmosphere with radioactive particles known as nuclear fallout.
Doomsday Clock- 2 Minutes till Doom…
The Cold War ended nearly three decades ago and then the Doomsday Clock was set to 17 minutes to midnight. The Clock, designed in 1947 by artist Martyl Langsdorf and set by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, signifies how close the world is to a “nuclear apocalypse.”
For the first time since 1953, the world is two minutes away from nuclear destruction.
While the world has faced the Clock’s proximity to midnight before and lived to see the minute hand move backward, the world – and thus the Clock – is currently influenced by a number of different factors that did not exist in 1953.
Perhaps the newest and most relevant is the higher probability of a nuclear weapon falling in the hands of a terrorist group or rogue state, but even more current and possibly pushing the superpowers to the edge is the war in the Ukraine. Under the Putin regime with his ill health, a war he is losing and the recent call to increase his troops he has said, he would “not rule out the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine nor against those assisting the Ukraine against Russia.” Additionally, tensions in the Pacific Theater have increased the last 4 years with China flexing its muscles.
These threats show that Alamogordo, and targets in New Mexico and the US should revisit their civil defense plans.
If one plugs into the Nukemap, the region around Alamogordo and the threat of one of Russia’s nuclear weapons that could be pointed to the regions of New Mexico one sees that the death tolls in the area around Alamogordo would be around 40,630 with 19,470 injured.
With a rising threat of a nuclear exchange, one wonders what plans Otero County and the city of Alamogordo have in place in the event of a nuclear exchange.
Let’s review the history of nuclear exchanges and civil defense to see how we got to where we are today in Otero County New Mexico.
US History of Nuclear Disaster Preparedness:
Today, fallout shelter signs represent remnants of the nuclear disaster preparedness plans that the United States government intermittently encouraged or funded during the Cold War, from the 1950s through the 1980s.
In 1950, United States Congress created the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA), to guide states’ actions in regards to civil defense policy. As such, FCDA was largely responsible for the first nuclear shelters.
In 1952, the FCDA – with the help of the Ad Council – created nine different short films about preparedness. These films included the famous Duck and Cover drill with Bert the Turtle, which portrayed students saving themselves from a nuclear attack by hiding underneath their school desks. Today, these films are seen as ill-informed, and even were used to make a 1982 satirical film, Atomic Cafe, about the misinformation the United States government gave to American soldiers and citizens in the early years of the Cold War.
During the early 1950s, the FCDA also encouraged Americans to begin building at-home nuclear fallout shelters. Each shelter was supposed to have at least two weeks of supplies, the recommended amount of time for staying in the shelter after an attack. At the time, however, Congress and the Executive Branch did not directly support this initiative due to the prohibitive cost of creating a system of nuclear fallout shelters across the country.
Following the Soviet Union’s test of the hydrogen bomb in 1953 and the release by the United States of the effects of its first thermonuclear bomb (“hydrogen bomb”) test, Mike, detonated in the Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1952, the Eisenhower administration determined that shelter programs were no longer effective and instituted evacuation plans instead. Both hydrogen bomb tests’ effects seemed to convince the public that it was not possible to survive a nuclear detonation, unless people were warned in advance of the attack. Evacuation planning over shelter planning was, though, only proposed by the FCDA until March 1954, right after the United States tested its most powerful hydrogen bomb, Castle Bravo. Bravo was tested on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands and had a yield 1,000 times higher than the Hiroshima bomb. The testing resulted in severe radioactive contamination of numerous islands, which continues to impact the Marshallese society today. This occurrence led Congress and the FCDA to determine again that shelters were necessary for citizens’ protection.
The FCDA proposed a National Shelter Policy, which according to Homeland Security would have cost around $32 billion. The necessity of this policy was supported by the Gaither Report, commissioned by President Eisenhower in 1957, and, the Rockefeller Report in 1958, lead by Henry Kissinger. Evidence presented in these two reports, though, was not enough for President Eisenhower, who refused to take action towards enacting the policy. Instead, he replaced the FCDA with the newly created the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization (OCDM), which eventually became the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) and the Office of Emergency Planning (OEM).
With the election of a new president, John F. Kennedy, shelters resurfaced as an important element of civil defense against a nuclear attack as the United States government directly advocated for and funded nuclear fallout shelters. In September of 1961, The Community Fallout Shelter Program began, following an extensive survey to determine shelter locations. Each shelter had to be able to serve at least fifty people, who were given a storage space of 1 cubic foot. The program set out to supply local shelter sites with materials to defend against the effects of radiation. The OCD allocated water drums, food rations, sanitation kits, medical kits, radiation detectors, and package ventilation kits to each of the shelters, which were directly run and maintained by local government’s civil defense offices. In October, Kennedy asked Congress to allot $100 million to create public fallout shelters across the country. By the end of 1961, the Department of Defense had created a 46-page booklet about the shelters, including instructions of what to do if a nuclear attack occurred. These booklets were distributed to post offices across the country. According to the Department of Homeland Security, by the end of 1963, nine million public shelters had been identified and supplied.
Preparedness for a nuclear disaster became a top priority for a final time under President Ronald Reagan’s administration (1981 to 1989). Following the creation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under President Jimmy Carter, President Reagan made nuclear disaster preparedness plans and evacuation routes a top priority, by asking Congress to allocate $4.2 billion for civil defense spending. While congress only allocated $147.9 million to the cause, this push for civil defense nuclear planning became the last of its kind to this day, following the end of the Cold War shortly after the end of the Reagan administration.
US Nuclear Preparedness Today
In the post- Cold War era (1991- today) the United States, along with other nations, faces a new kind of nuclear threat. During the Cold War, the United States’ main nuclear opponent was the Soviet Union. Today, the United States faces a threat of a nuclear disaster not only from other countries, such as North Korea, Iran, or other rogue nations, but also from terrorist groups, who could easily access the materials and information necessary to construct a nuclear weapon. In addition, one cannot dismiss the possibility of a disaster stemming from accidental use of weapons currently in the United States’ own arsenal or other countries’ arsenals.
One threat facing the world today is missing weapons-grade materials from the old Soviet nuclear stockpile. In order to build a nuclear weapon, one would need plutonium (Pu 239) or highly-enriched uranium (HEU), uranium with a concentration of U235 higher than 20%. During unstable economic times, former Soviet nuclear personnel used to sell HEU on the side. The Soviet Union never created an inventory list of its nuclear materials, so most of the material that was and is stolen during and after the Cold War isn’t known to be missing. Between 1991 and 2002, there were fourteen confirmed cases of theft of weapons-useable nuclear material from Russia’s nuclear stockpile. Russia currently has 680 metric tons of HEU, over half of the total amount that exists in the world. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a significant quantity of HEU, meaning “the approximate amount of nuclear material for which the possibility of manufacturing a nuclear explosive device cannot be excluded,” is 25 kg or 55.1 lbs. Since Russia does not disclose its plutonium stockpile to the IAEA, it is unknown how much the nation currently possesses. According to the IAEA, a significant quantity of plutonium is 8 kg or 17.6 lbs.
The uncertainty surrounding unguarded weapons-useable nuclear material is not limited to Russia. In 2007, six nuclear warheads were accidentally flown from an Air Force Base in North Dakota to Louisiana. The warheads were missing for 24 hours before officials in Louisiana discovered the error.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, there are over 14,000 declared nuclear warheads in the world today, and given the yet to be successful intentions for a world free of nuclear weapons, the threat of a nuclear disaster still looms large. As Dr. Redlener states: “There is no putting the toothpaste back in the tube here. …. I cannot imagine circumstances where we can get verifiable information of elimination of all nuclear weapons on the planet. I think we do have to come to grips with that … and make sure that we have done everything possible to control any situation that might result in a nuclear detonation.”
The United States and its citizens are not currently prepared for the aftereffects of a nuclear disaster of any type, whether an air missile from another nation, an attack on the ground from a terrorist or terrorist group, or some kind of accidental detonation.
We live in a state with the nation’s (and perhaps the world’s) largest repository of nuclear weapons, estimated at up to 2,500 warheads.
What is the local plan in the event of a nuclear exchange. Has the Otero County Commission or the City of Alamogordo’s leadership reviewed an emergency preparedness plan in recent decades? Is the plan visible and easy to find online by the common citizen?
When one does a basic google search for a nuclear preparedness plan for Otero County or Alamogordo one finds a comprehensive plan for Albuquerque understandably, one is found for Cloudcroft with 9 mentions of the nuclear threat in their civil defense plan and easily found on Google. A plan for Otero County and Alamogordo may exist however if it does it was difficult for the public to find, review or comment on.
Per the Albuquerque plan, “Albuquerque is identified in the latest Nuclear Attack Planning Base (NAPB) as a high-risk area, subject to blast overpressures > 2.0 pound per square inch in the unlikely event of nuclear attack. Approximately 465,912 evacuees from the city and nearby areas will be assigned to locations within Bernalillo County and other New Mexico counties for shelter”
Cloudcrofts plan mentions the nuclear threat 9 times to include succession planning…
“In a Civil Defense emergency due to threat or occurrence of a nuclear incident, succession to elected and appointed Village or County officials will be as provided in the New Mexico Disaster Succession Act(Chapter 12, Article 11) designated Successors may serve only as permitted by the Act.”
A plan may exist for Otero County and for the city of Alamogordo, state law requires the various government bodies to have emergency preparedness plans, but the nuclear preparedness for Otero County and Alamogordo is not easily found. If one exists, please forward the links so we may alert the public to the plan.
If one does not exist or has not been updates in the last decade, it may indeed be time to review given America’s nuclear scientist access we are 2 minutes from doom.
What are some tips in the event of attack? While it may seem unlikely that a person could survive a nuclear attack, there are seven simple actions that one can take to save his or her life – assuming that one is far enough (more than .5 miles away) from the core of the explosion. They are:
(1) Do not stare at the light from the flash because it will blind a person instantly and keep your mouth open to handle the pressure released from the initial blast.
(2) Decide to move ten to twenty minutes walking distance away from the blast site or seek shelter either below ground or above the 9th floor of a building, to avoid the effects of fallout from the mushroom cloud.
(3) Move crosswind from damaged buildings if you choose to leave, but only for 10-20 minutes. (4) Keep your mouth, skin, and nose covered as much as possible.
(5) Remove your clothes, rinse off with a hose, while holding your breath. Seek medical care if possible.
(6) Stay in the shelter for 12-24 hours after an attack to avoid the initial massive amount of exposure to radiation after a nuclear attack, or as long as instructed by the government. Only leave shelter once you know the direction to move.
The people of Otero County have survived a nuclear blast from the past.
However significant cancer rates etc. exist with those impacted and the Downwinders Group is fighting that fight. An in-depth story on the plight of the Downwinders will be in the upcoming issue of Southeastern New Mexico Influence Magazine due for release mid-September 2022. Stay tuned to our publications and that of Southeastern New Mexico Influence Magazine to learn more.
An interesting resource to hear on stories of the Trinity Site via oral histories is
Chris Edwards Author, Mentor/Executive Coach & Political Consultant 