Posts by Sig Silber

What do the two massacres that occurred on Saint Valentine’s Day have in common and how do they differ?

We start with the one which took place in Chicago Illinois and which is the most famous.

Credit

I can’t show you the photos since they are so valuable that they remain under copywrite protection due to a series of laws that have extended the copywrite provisions (wouldn’t you know how that works LOL) but you may be able to see great photos HERE or  HERE.   I have exceeded my limit of free reads.

The Saint Valentine’s Day massacre was a mass murder that took place in Chicago, Illinois, United States, on the morning of 14 February 1929.^[a] It was the most infamous event in the history of crime in the United States.

Background

Al Capone was the most powerful bootlegger in Chicago. By 1929 he had eliminated several of his rival crime bosses.^[2] The last one on his “list” was Bugs Moran. Capone was trying to appear as if he was retired to Florida.^[3] So Capone didn’t want to be seen as starting another gang war.^[3] Instead, Capone gave the order to one of his associates, Jack McGurn, to eliminate Bugs Moran.^[2]

Massacre

On the morning of 14 February, McGurn lured Moran and his men to a warehouse on Clark street. The bait was a stolen truckload of whisky they could buy cheap.^[4] Seven of Moran’s men were there to inspect the load. A police car pulled up outside the building and several of Capone’s men dressed in Chicago police uniforms went in and pretended to arrest Moran’s men.^[4] When they were lined up against a wall the killers pulled out Thompson submachine guns and opened fire. Six of the seven men were killed.^[5] Moran himself was just arriving when he saw the police car and escaped.^[4]

At this time murder was not a federal offense.^[6] Most of the killers McGurn hired were from out of town. Police departments from different cities rarely could work together to solve crimes at that time. So the killers knew if they simply left Chicago after the massacre nobody could touch them.^[6]

Results

Newspapers ran stories of the gangster shootings and prohibition lawlessness in Chicago.^[7] These were complete with detailed photographs of the murders. At first many thought the Chicago police had committed the massacre.^[b] But most people in Chicago thought Al Capone was behind the murders.^[7] Capone had an alibi. He was at his winter home in Palm Beach, Florida when the murders took place. The suspicions finally resulted in the arrests of Vincenzio Damora and John Scalise. These were two of Capone’s known henchmen. Scalise was charged with the murders after Damora came up with an alibi. But Capone murdered Scalise himself before he could stand trial.^[7] Public opinion also put pressure on the FBI to arrest Capone with any charge they could. In 1931 they finally charged him with tax evasion and sent him to prison.^[9] Capone was sent to Alcatraz for eleven years. When he was finally released he was too sick to continue his crime career. He died in 1947.^[9] Prohibition was repealed in 1933 which almost stopped bootlegging.^[7]

Let us now talk about this other Saint Valentine’s Day massacre or an accident that was almost a massacre (we do not really know the full impact on those involved) and one that likely will be repeated. Most of these images were provided to me by Cynthia Weehler.  They are based on U.S. Government Documents so they should be considered accurate.

What happened? From Wikipedia  (LINK)

Incidents at the WIPP

On February 5, 2014 at around 11:00 a.m., a salt haul truck caught fire, prompting an evacuation of the underground facility.^[20] Six workers were taken to a local hospital with smoke inhalation and were released by the next day. Lab tests after the fire confirmed that there was zero release of radiological material during, or as a result of, the fire.^[21] Underground air-monitoring equipment was out of commission after the truck fire.^[22]

On February 15, 2014, authorities ordered workers to shelter in place at the facility after air monitors had detected unusually high radiation levels at 11:30 p.m. the previous day. None of the facility’s 139 workers were underground at the time of the incident.^[23][24] Later, trace amounts of airborne radiation consisting of americium and plutonium particles were discovered above ground, 0.5 mi (0.80 km) from the facility.^[23] In total, 22 workers were exposed to radioactive contaminants equaling that of a standard chest x-ray.^[25] The Carlsbad Current-Argus wrote: “the radiation leak occurred on the evening of February 14, according to new information made public at a news conference [on February 20]. Joe Franco, manager of the DOE Carlsbad Field Office, said an underground air monitor detected high levels of alpha and beta radiation activity consistent [sic] the waste buried at WIPP.”^[26] Regarding the elevated levels of plutonium and americium detected outside the nuclear waste repository, Ryan Flynn, New Mexico Environment Secretary stated during a news conference: “Events like this simply should never occur. From the state’s perspective, one event is far too many.”^[27]

On February 26, 2014, the DOE announced that 13 WIPP above-ground workers had tested positive for exposure to radioactive material. Other employees were in the process of being tested. On Thursday, February 27, DOE announced that it sent out “a letter to tell people in two counties what they do know so far. Officials said it is too early to know what that means for the workers’ health.”^[28] Additional testing would be done on employees who were working at the site the day after the leak. Above ground, 182 employees continued to work. A February 27 update included comments on plans to discover what occurred below ground first by using unmanned probes and then people.^[29][30]

The Southwest Research and Information Center released a report on April 15, 2014^[31] that one or more of 258 contact-handled radioactive waste containers located in room 7, panel 7 of the underground repository released radioactive and toxic chemicals.^[32] The location of the leak was estimated to be approximately 1,500 feet (460 m) from the air monitor that triggered the contaminants in the filtration system. The contaminants were spread through more than 3,000 feet (910 m) of tunnels, leading to the 2,150-foot (660 m) exhaust shaft into the surrounding above-ground environment. Air-monitoring station #107, located 0.5 miles (0.8 km) away, detected the radiotoxins. The filter from station #107 was analyzed by the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center (CEMRC) and found to contain 0.64 becquerels (Bq) per cubic meter of air of americium-241 and 0.014 Bq of plutonium-239 and plutonium-240 per cubic meter of air (equivalent to 0.64 and 0.014 radioactive decay events per second per cubic meter of air).^[33] The DOE agreed that there was a release of radioactivity from the repository and confirmed that “The event took place starting at 14 February 2014 at 23:14 and continued to 15 February 2014 14:45.”^[34] The DOE also confirmed that “A large shift in wind direction can be seen to occur around 8:30 AM on 2/15/14.”^[35][36] The EPA reported on the radiological release on their WIPP News page.^[37]

After analysis by CEMRC, the station A filter was found on February 15, 2014 to be contaminated with 4,335.71 Bq of Am-241 per every 35 cubic feet (1 m³), and 671.61 Bq of plutonium-239 and plutonium-240 per every 35 cubic feet (1 m³).^[38] Bob Alvarez, former DOE official, stated that the long-term ramifications of the WIPP issue are grounded in the fact that the DOE has 66,000 m³ (2,300,000 cu ft) of transuranic waste that has not been disposed of due to the fact that there are no long-term disposition plans for transuranic waste, including 5 tons of plutonium that are in-situ at the Savannah River Site, as well as water from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State.^[39] In an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Alvarez wrote that “Wastes containing plutonium blew through the WIPP ventilation system, traveling 2,150 feet to the surface, contaminating at least 17 workers, and spreading small amounts of radioactive material into the environment.”^[40] The URS Corporation, who oversees WIPP, removed and demoted the contracted manager of the repository. Alvarez ponders the notion of “contract handling” of radioactive waste because it deploys conventional processing practices that do not take into consideration the tens of thousands of containers buried before 1970 at several Department of Energy sites. Alvarez states that the quantity of this pre-1970 plutonium waste is 1,300 times more than the amount permitted to “leak” into the environment at WIPP; however, much of this waste is simply buried a few feet underground at DOE sites.^[41]

The source of contamination was later found to be a barrel that exploded on February 14 because contractors at Los Alamos National Laboratory packed it with organic cat litter instead of clay cat litter. Other barrels with the same problem were then sealed in larger containers.^[42] Anthropologist Vincent Ialenti has examined the political, social, and financial triggers to this organic kitty litter error in detail, linking it to the accelerated pace of the Department of Energy’s and State of New Mexico’s 3706 nuclear waste cleanup campaign, which ran from 2011 to 2014. Ialenti’s study was published in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in July 2018.^[43]

The 2014 incidents raised the question of whether or not WIPP would be a safe replacement for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, as a destination for all waste generated at U.S. commercial nuclear power plants.^[5] The cost of the 2014 accident was expected to exceed $2 billion and disrupted other programs in various nuclear industry sites.^[44] On January 9, 2017, the plant was formally reopened after three years of cleanup costing $500 million, which is significantly less than forecasted.^[45] On April 10, the plant received its first shipment of waste since reopening.^46]

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