Full Body Burden

Kristen Iversen opens with a scene in her family car in 1963. She is a five-year-old child, and her parents drive her and her younger sister Karin home after touring the nearby Colorado mountains. Shocked, her parents stop the car, seeing their house burning in a fire. Iversen’s mother takes her to her neighbor’s house. Iversen blames herself for leaving a lamp on, but years later, her father says the fire started with one her parents’ lit cigarettes.

Iversen and her family move out of their house and return after its repair. Her parents drink cocktails after dinner but do not speak about alcohol. Her mother has a baby she names Karma. Iversen and her sister Karin play with neighborhood friends at the 19th century cemetery in neighboring Arvada. They can see Arvada down the hill, as well as the secret Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant in the distance. 

The plant specializes in the manufacture of “plutonium ‘triggers’ for nuclear bombs” (3). These incredibly powerful triggers are expensive to produce and result in radioactive waste that contaminates the environment throughout the plant’s decades-long activity. 

Iversen details the beginnings of Rocky Flats. The plant, conceived in 1951 during the Cold War, represents the Atomic Energy Commission’s (AEC) secret efforts to create a cache of nuclear weapons. Although Rocky Flats is not the only one of these factories, “the whole system” (5) of nuclear production relies on its products. The AEC declares its intentions to build their new factory near Denver without notifying the local government, but the community is thrilled at the prospect of jobs and benefits the factory will bring to the area. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 ensures that the nuclear buildup and its effects remain hidden from the public eye. 

To developers, the former ranching fields of Rocky Flats appear to be a safe place for the factory. However, Rocky Flats engineer Jim Stone observes that the location, susceptible to powerful chinook winds, might blow harmful air from the plant to the city of Denver. The mayor of Arvada expresses concerns about a housing buildup. The highly fortified plant, shrouded in secrecy, rapidly grows over the following two decades and releases waste into both the water and air. 

Meanwhile, Iversen’s family acquires a long string of various pets. On Saturdays, she and her siblings follow their father as he mows the yard and burns trash. After the birth of Iversen’s brother Kurt, her parents build a new home in an emerging development called Bridledale. Iversen’s father takes the children out for McDonald’s and stops at the liquor store on the way home.

Iversen’s father stays busy with his law practice and works on Saturdays. He sends his children to the ice cream parlor while he drinks at the bar or at his desk. He acquires sundry items from certain clients, including an old horse named Buster that eventually has to be returned. Iversen, infatuated with horses, asks for one of her own. Watching the night sky, Iversen notices the moon and the lights of Rocky Flats. Her mother says that Dow Chemical runs the plant and manufactures cleaning products there. 

Iversen’s father’s client brings a brown and white horse named Tonka to Bridledale. Iversen rides Tonka bareback, and an apple bough knocks her to the ground. She declares, “For the first time I’m in love” (15). While Iversen’s outspoken grandmother Opal visits, her father assembles the four children on Tonka for a photograph. Tonka becomes spooked when Iversen mounts, and she breaks her arm. That night she hears Opal and her mother arguing about her father’s drinking. 

The evening of Mother’s Day, 1969, the family eats at an Italian restaurant for the holiday. At the Rocky Flats plant, a fire breaks out. Inside a glove box where staffers shape nuclear triggers, plutonium sparks without activating an alarm. 

The word trigger is a misnomer for the products of Rocky Flats, because each can cause the same damage as an atomic bomb. The day of the fire, the plant has a lower staff due to the holiday. On the empty road toward Rocky Flats, four security guards—Stan, Bill, Joe, and Al—carpool to work. Iversen details how other employees like Jim Kelly and Dr. Robert Rothe feel uncertain about the nuclear triggers at Rocky Flats. The four men in the car arrive at the plant’s security gate, and a guard tells them about the fire. 

Meanwhile, Rocky Flats radiation monitor Willie Warling goes to a bar. His job is ensuring that employees do not make contact with plutonium particles, and he cleans spills in the factory. If touched or inhaled, tiny particles of plutonium can cause fatal damage to the body. 

The fire spreads from the initial glove box to the others surrounding it. An alarm sounds, notifying the three firefighters on site. At the bar, Warling receives notice of the emergency.

The three firemen—Skull, Sweet, and captain Wayne Jesser—travel to the site of the fire. Skull and Jesser use liquid carbon dioxide on the flames to no avail. Outside, Warling tells them they cannot reenter due to their so-called “hot” (26) radiation levels. 

Guards Bill and Stan learn that the fire has grown and that there aren’t enough people nor equipment to fight it. The guards decide to protect themselves with full suiting equipment and fight the fire themselves. Bill remembers a previous fire at Rocky Flats on September 11, 1957. 

During the 1957 fire, Bill worked as a guard and faced the fire with his partner. The fire threatened the roof of the building. Firefighters doused the flames with water, causing an explosion. The fire and smoke caused extensive damage to the building and its filtration system. The smoke, containing a still-unknown amount of nuclear materials, floated toward nearby residential communities. The press paid little attention to the event, and the AEC continued to keep the true function of Rocky Flats a secret. However, later soil and water tests show evidence that a nuclear chain reaction might have occurred during the 1957 fire. 

During the Mother’s Day fire in 1969, Bill and Stan put on protective suiting and enter the production facility, seeing a raging fire and pitch-black smoke. All glove boxes are aflame, including supposedly non-flammable materials. The men try to throw sand at the fire and transition to using carbon dioxide. They emerge from the building and decide to use water hoses. The other firefighters, working on the opposite side of the structure, also fight the fire with water despite the risk of causing a nuclear reaction. 

Bill and Stan see the fire’s source in the plutonium foundry area. Underpasses beneath this area fill with water. Bill and Stan descend into an underpass and emerge to spray the foundry with their hoses. They come outside again. A radiation monitor named George tells them they have hazardous materials on their suits and cannot return inside. Insistent, Bill and Stan reenter and spray water at the fire and each other to keep themselves cool. Something falls on Stan that he fears is the roof but is only ceiling tile. Outside again, Bill and Stan laugh at the mishap. 

On the roof of the facility, Jesser orders firefighters to spray water. The fire largely destroyed the ceiling filtration system. Bill and Stan continue their fight, but Stan’s hose malfunctions, and the spray dislodges his mask and exposes his face to the toxic air inside the facility. Bill’s oxygen tank runs out, and another guard named Charlie Perrisi saves him. 

Iversen identifies the “three lucky breaks, all largely the result of human error” (38) that save Rocky Flats from nuclear disaster during the Mother’s Day fire in 1969. The first is a metal plate that redirects the fire inside the facility. Second, firefighters fail to compile plutonium in a heap, which would cause a nuclear reaction, or criticality. Third, an accidental power outage shuts off the exhaust fans that feed the fire. 

Stan and Bill undergo an intensive decontamination process at the plant. The fire, which begins around two in the afternoon, is “considered more or less extinguished by eight o’clock” (40). 

Iversen and her family live their lives as usual, and the community remains largely ignorant of the Rocky Flats fire on May 11. Iversen’s parents prepare for their new move and sign a document that acknowledges the possible presence of plutonium at Bridledale. The family moves into the suburban development with its attractive amenities. Their neighbor is developer Rex Haag, who also has a daughter named Kristen.

Iversen cites a confidential AEC report, which states that the fire has exposed 41 workers to “substantial doses of radiation” (42). Damages to the facilities exceed $50 million, although plutonium trigger production continues. An extensive cleaning process ensues, and Bill and Stan continue their guard duties, while Charlie Perrisi becomes a janitor due to high plutonium exposure. Both Bill and Stan contract illnesses that might be a result from radiation exposure. A later congressional investigation exposes the AEC’s attempts to cover up the fire and its failure to improve the facilities after the 1957 fire, leaving the plant vulnerable to the 1969 fire. 

Iversen’s family accumulates a menagerie of pets. Iversen spends time with Tonka, chasing him, riding him bareback, and feeding him treats. The horse’s former owner, Glen, recommends throwing a water balloon at Tonka to make him stop rearing his head, but the trick does not work. One day, Iversen and her sister find an unconscious woman in a car. Sharing the sight with their mother, Karin posits that the woman is an alcoholic. Iversen observes, “My mother’s look is sharp. ‘How do you know that word?’ she asks” (45).

After her brother Kurt’s third birthday party, Iversen waits for her father to come home. He arrives, distracted and detached, and asks her about school. Iversen asks him about the lights on the horizon, and her father answers that it “is Rocky Flats. The defense of our country” (46). 

Kristen Haag develops cancer in her leg and dies. Haag suggests it might be the product of Rocky Flats' waste and considers filing suit. Iversen’s parents and other neighbors reject this notion. Under analysis, one lab shows that Kristen’s ashes contain plutonium-239, while another test is inconclusive.