Must-See Woolsey Fire & SSFL Documentary: ‘In the Dark of the Valley’
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"In the Dark of the Valley" tells the story of the Santa Susana Field Lab and the Los Angeles communities fighting to clean up its cancer-causing radioactive waste. The new feature documentary airs Sunday, November 14th at 10 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC.
By The Fairewinds Crew
Fairewinds’ recent Woolsey Fire project was a collaborative effort years in the making. First, we built a coalition among experts and citizen scientists from the affected areas surrounding the Santa Susana Field Lab (SSFL) site. Among them were concerned community members and, most importantly, parents worried that the Woolsey Fire had indeed remobilized radioactivity from the SSFL site. This site had suffered an undisclosed nuclear reactor meltdown event in 1959. Since the 1950s, however, the ever-growing Los Angeles metropolitan area (with its dense suburban neighborhoods) expanded ever closer to the SSFL site. So, when the 2018 Woolsey Fire raged across the landscape and after the results of our collaboration with those parents turned citizen scientists vindicated their worst fears: radioactively contaminated ash and smoke did migrate from the SSFL site.
Now, MSNBC will widely share the stories of local community members, activists, and parents in a brilliantly produced and acclaimed documentary entitled In the Dark of the Valley. This documentary, which will be aired nationwide, chronicles the stories of families living in the shadow of chemical and radiological contamination, making them and their children ill. MSNBC recently acquired this film and will air it on Sunday, November 14th at 10:00 PM EST (that means 7:00 PM PT). For more details, you may read the full press release here.
Variety, an online magazine, writes:
“The documentary tells the story of a mother in southern California who finds that an abandoned rocket-testing facility, called the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, near her home was the site of one of the largest nuclear accidents in the U.S. She examines the possibility that the site may have exposed the surrounding community to cancer-causing radioactive and chemical waste.”
In an October 7th article entitled Meet the people exposing the truth about the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, MSNBC follows the stories of those parents, activists, and community members demanding justice and leading the fight to clean up the SSFL site. Like the documentary, this article profiles these individuals, giving this movement a face and sharing the human perspective of this crucial issue with all of us. Please see this highly regarded film!
