THA NK YOU FOR ISITIN GTHE GV SSOM AEROPLE X

I'm currently up near Kokomo, Indiana at a training session put on by the Indiana Department of Homeland Security. The session is "Introduction to Emergency Management," and covers a lot of the basics of emergency management, including the various functions and phases. I don't know how I fit in to all of this exactly (career-wise), but I know it's good to be here learning and making these connections. Most of the people here are much older than I am – of the 40 people here, 33 are probably white men in their 50 – and all of them have more things on their belt and flashing lights on their SUVs and trucks than me.

The class is at the dilapidated, somewhat-melancholy Grissom Joint Air Reserve Base (named for Gus Grissom). A few decades ago, the base must have had a thriving little community. It was originally a training and testing base, and has been greatly downsized in the last decade. One of the guys at the training is a local – "grew up just on the other side of that fence there," as he says – and talks about how he used to come onto the base to play with the military kids. It feels a lot more like a ghost town. Really, this picture says it all.

The base isn't entirely inoperative – there's still a squadron of KC-135 refueling planes that operates out of the base, and it's also been opened to civic use. The base might have been closed were it not for an accident that occured in 1964, when a B-58 (a supersonic bomber) skidded off the runway with five nuclear devices.

"On December 8, 1964, during a routine Operational Readiness Inspection, a B-58 strategic bomber skidded off the runway) at Bunker Hill AFB, IN (later named Grissom Air Force Base). The consequence of the accident was a fire and destruction of five nuclear weapons on the aircraft. The high explosives in the weapons did not detonate, but melted and burned, leaving some residual radioactive contamination in soils adjacent to the runway. The contaminated area was excavated and buried along with the aircraft wreckage at a different location on base. In June 1996, the Air Force Safety Center conducted a review of both classified and unclassified documents in its possession and concluded that sufficient data did not exist to support closure of the site. Since that time, the State of Indiana and this organization performed small- scale scoping surveys that identified a small area with elevated gamma radiation exposure levels. Soil samples collected from the area indicated the presence of depleted uranium."

Oops. Anyway, I guess that's a good reason to not close the base. Back in Bloomington tomorrow!