Interview with Joselito Ines
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0:00:00 Tom Hungate: Okay.
Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history with Joselito Ines on November 6, 2017. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I wil be talking with Lito about his experiences working for the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?
Lito Ines: Full name is Joselito Ines. J-O-S-E-L-I-T-O. Last name, Ines, I-N-E-S. And I go by Lito.
Franklin: Great, thanks, Lito. So tell me how and why you came to the area to work for the Hanford Site.
0:00:35 Ines: well, it was my main background was hotel/motel management. A lot of my—that’s when I was pretty young, in my teens. I was approached by all my best friends to go and work at Hanford, because they said they pay more, and less hours. So I did. I signed up for the apprentice program for the operating engineers, local 370. That’s how I started with working out at Hanford at the 200 Area, as an apprentice heavy equipment operator.
Franklin: Heavy equipment operator, okay. Did you need any particular background or training to do that? Or did they kind of just take you in the apprentice program at the ground level?
0:01:27 Ines: Yeah. The apprentice program is usually you have to take an aptitude test to make sure you know how to read, write, add, subtract. [LAUGHTER] You know, that kind of stuff. I mean, you just can’t get in there. And what I did is on that year, in ’79, early ’79, there was about 2,000 people that applied for this apprentice program, and there’s only ten people that’s going to make it. So I knew I didn’t have a chance, because my background is something else. And then I talked to everybody, and everybody was in construction and military and farm. Nothing. And for some reason, I got up in the top five, just on aptitude. Because military gets a discount. [LAUGHTER] And I didn’t have that either. But I made it to the top five.
Franklin: Wow, that’s great. I want to rewind just a little bit. How did you come to the Tri-Cities area? When did you come to the area?
Ines: To the area. Well, my grandfather started a farm here in Kennewick in 1950. So in 1950, my family was the first Filipino that settled here in the Tri-City area.
Franklin: Wow.
Ines: The farm that he had was in Kennewick. It’s called Canyon Lakes now. But that used to be our farm. My father decided to come because he passed away for a funeral. So when he came here in ’65, he decided he wants to stay here. And so two years later on—because he had to go on the immigration process and things like that—and two years we came in here, in ’67, and I was 15. Immigration there was pretty lax. So as soon as we got here, we got a green card right off the bat.
0:03:24 Franklin: So you came here from the Philippines.
Ines: From Philippines, yup.
Franlkin: Oh, okay, so your grandfather was already here, but your father and you were in the Philipines until 1967.
Ines: Yeah, my grandfather actually came to the United States in 1923.
Franklkni: Oh, wow.
Ines: During the year where they took a lot of Asian, they took Japanese, Korean, I think even some Portuguese. The Chinese were already here because of the railroad. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right, right.
Ines: But these are all the agriculture because what they did is they—the United States figured out that this group of people are good in growing sugar cane and pineapple. That’s why they all went to Hawaii first. That’s how he got here.
Franklin: Okay.
Ines; And then of course, they were in Hawaii and then they went to California.
Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Ines: And then they started the revolution for the union workers. The Filipinos started that, not the Spanish people. And then from there he moved to Union Gap. Then he came here in 1950.
Franklin: Oh, okay, cool. And then your family, you and your family were in the hotel business until ’75—
Ines: No.
Franklin: Oh, no?
Ines: Just me.
Franklin: Oh, just you.
Ines: I was in the hotel—my dad was an architect here at Hanford.
Franklin: Oh, really?
Ines: Yeah.
Franklin: When did your dad start working at Hanford?
Ines: Well, when we became citizens. Because at that time you had to be a citizen to work at Hanford. So he tried and applied here before ’71. That’s when we got all our citizenship. And they all hired him, but then they found out he wasn’t a citizen. So we had to wait until ’71. So he became a citizen, all of us, in ’71, and that’s when he started. But I didn’t start till later on.
Franklin: And what did your dad do for Hanford again?
Ines: He was a senior architect here at Hanford.
Franklin: Okay. So I assume he had gone to school for that back in the Philippines?
Ines: Yes. He was a—actually had two things in the Philippines. He was an architect and a patent examiner. So he worked for the government up there for the patent office.
Franklin: Okay. And what were some of your dad’s duties as senior architect at—
Ines: Well, they just build all the structures here for the Hanford Project, yeah.
Franklin: Oh, okay. And then you waited—it wasin ’79 then that you came to work at—and you worked for JA Jones?
Ines: JA Jones was the first company I worked for at the 200 Area.
Franklin: Right,a nd they were one of the major—
Ines: At that time.
Franklin: contractor—construction contractors, right?
Ines: At that time, yes.
Franklin: At that time.
Ines: Yeah.
Franklin: So kind of like walk me through a typical day for a heavy equipment operator.
0:06:15 Ines: Well, the first thing we’d do at Hanford, you know, as everybody knows, it’s probably the safest place to work when it comes to safety. Because that’s all they think about, is safety. So we have our safety meeting, usually consists of at least half-an-hour. Because at that time, we all meet together, all the different crafts. And all the different crafts have different duties and different tasks. SO we talked about everybody’s safety topic for that day, what they’re going to be doing and what kind of safety, or accident they could get into so we could talk about it before they get in there. And then after that, then they split us up and then the boss will tell us, this is where you’re going, this is what you’re going to run, and this is what we’re going to be doing. And you’re going to be working with this kind of craft. Because my craft at Hanford was just a support group. Because I normally worked for a certain craft. I used my machine to do the lifting, whatever it is, for them. Running cranes, I have to move things around for them and things like that.
Franklin: Okay. And do you primarily worked—early on you worked in the 200 East and 200 West areas?
Ines: Yes.
Franklin: Okay. Did you know of any other Filipinos working for Hanford at the time? Or—
Ines: No, just my family. Just like I said, we were the first Filipino family here in the Tri-Cities. [LAUGHTER] I mean, growing up, we were it. You know? So if you say, hey, do you know those Filipino family? That’s us! [LAUGHTER]
Franklin; What other—you mentioned that the first thing you’d do would be the safety meeting with other crafts. What other kinds of crafts were represented?
Ines: Well, they had plumbers, they had carpenters, they had laborers, they have ironworkers, sheet metal workers, insulators. I don’t know what else if I missed. Yeah, I think that’s—
Franklin: And what kind of structures did you—do you have any examples of any specific structures that you helped put up or helped support the construction of?
Ines: Well, a lot of the buildings we built was in support of the old buildings. You know, because in those years, all the reactors and all those other—it’s already built. So the only thing we were building is we were building sometimes more buildings for the new people, office people, engineers that come in so they have a place to work. Or laboratory for the scientists to work on. And a lot of the things I did, too, in those years was digging up the Tank Farms. Because in that years, we were building a lot of Tank Farms.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Ines: So we were building a lot of—digging a lot of those, and that’s where we find a lot of old—[LAUGHTER]—old things that’s not in the record!
Franklin: Oh, okay. I’m wondering if we could talk about—can we talk about that a little bit? Like, what kinds of—
Ines: Well, sometimes we’d find like vaults or things. I mean, cans that’s not labeled and then we’d always have, we call it an RCT, someone to see if there’s any radi—and most of the time they go out there and the scale would just go, brr! [LAUGHTER] And we don’t know what it is. And then they’d look at their history, see if there’s anything written. Of course there’s none. And then what they do, is we can’t touch anything, so they’d have to call somebody, if they’re still alive, that worked in that area. And then they’d come down—[LAUGHTER] So all these 90-year-old people. [LAUGHTER] They all go in there, and they’re kind of like, yeah, I remember I dug that, and we buried this and that. But you know. That was it. [LAUGHTER] But we’d find all kinds of stuff. One time we were digging a big hole for the tank, and we had a clamdigger and my RCT was sitting on the bank. It was a deep hole. And I was down there, because one of my jobs was to make sure that the elevation was right, we don’t go too deep. And this clam bucket, it’s attached to an old—well, in those times, our machines were really old. [LAUGHTER] And it’s a clam bucket that opens up and then he drops that and then when he picks it up, it closes and brings out the dirt. It’s the old machine. Now they don’t—all, everything’s hydraulic. So one time I was standing there and all of the sudden he dropped that thing and he hit something solid, like dunk! [LAUGHTER] I looked, I go, ho, that thing go! And then I looked at that—the RCT was on the top of the slop. He stood up, he looked at his Geiger and he started running! And I said, hold it! What is this? Am I supposed to run, too? And I said, come on, you guys, let’s get out of here! Because I guess they buried it. And he was on top, and this was in the hole. And it buried his needle. So he said, go! And then of course he sounded the alarm and then of course all of this Hanford Patrol, I mean, everybody—the whole place was packed, and they shut the whole thing down. And just like I said, they don’t know what’s in there, because it’s supposed to be clean. That’s why we’re digging. So the same old scenario; they had to call somebody who’s about 90 years old and say do you remember what’s in there? And that’s the same thing it is. He’s in the thing, he goes, yeah, we dug that thing and we put something in there. But yeah it’s like a vault or something. But he doesn’t know what’s in it. Because most of the time the only one that knows is whoever the head dudes. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right, the other guys would just bury the stuff.
Ines: Yeah! They told them to bury that thing in there.
Franklin: Yeah.
Ines: There’s a lot of stuff out there. I worked at that 618-10.
Franklin: I was just about to ask you aobut that, yeah.
Ines: I mean, I knew that’s what they were dumping—they’re dumping that all over the place.
Franklin: Right, and 618-10 was trying to take care of that stuff that had been left out there and not really well-documented.
Ines: Yeah, they’re not documented. The thing I did there, the last project I did is I built an area where they can practice on how to dig these cans. The reason why is, if you open these cans accidentally, it explodes and it gives out gas, and it gives out flames. They don’t know what’s in those cans. That’s the worst part about it. They don’t know what emits. It could be deadly poison or just radioactive; they don’t have a clue. That’s what 618-10. But the other job that I just did out there was an experimental thing at 324 Building. If you guys have heard about it; it’s the most highly deadliest building out there at Hanford.
Franklin: Yeah, and that’s just up here in the 300 Area.
Ines: [LAUGHTER] Yeah! Not too far!
Franklin: And that’s the one that’s still up, right? Because they haven’t—
Ines: They can’t.
Franklin: --figured out yet—yeah.
Ines: Yeah, they can’t, bevause if you go in there, like, if you open the door, you’re probably dead. That’s how hot it is. They call it an IDLH building—immediate death to life and health. So if you open that, you’re dead.
Franklin: Wow, I’ve never heard that acronym before. What is it, ID—
Ines: LH.
Franklin: IDLH. Okay.
Ines: Immediate Death to Health. [LAUGHTER]
14:12 Franklin: Doesn’t sound good.
Ines: Immediate Death to Life and Health, that’s what it was, yeah.
Franklin: To life and health.
Ines: Yeah.
Franklin: Wow.
Ines: Yeah. And the thing of that, what we were doing is, we were doing the experimental stage of how to get to it, and eventually we’re going to do everything robotics. So that’s supposed to be a five-year job for us to experiment and do the, you know, everything in robotics with the screen andeverything. But everything failed. [LAUGHTER] All of our experiments failed. We were there for about six months, and of course, those were all engineering. See, everything at Hanford is budget-related, whether the government gave you, this is for this, and that for that. So the engineering budget was done, and they all failed. So they laid us off—[LAUGHTER]—because we had all the money to do the experiment for five years—and gave it back to engineering. But I think they just started. I think—yeah, I can’t remember who’s doing it. I think it’s Apollo and something. It was in the paper.
Franklin: And they’re using robotics to go inside the building.
Ines: Eventually, when we go, when we get there. Right now they’re just starting, just prepping the area.
Franklin: Oh, right. Yeah. That’s really interesting that you mentioned that they had kind of bring these older retired guys out to explain what’s in these stuff that you would find, because it kind of sounds like making them an ad hoc oral history with them of, like, what’d you do when you buried these things out here?
Ines: Exactly. That’s basically what they asked. And of course, we had the Native Americans out there, too, so if we dig up any kind of bones or—
Franklin: Did you witness that? Did that happen while you were working in heavy equipment?
Ines: You know, I ran into one of them, but he was out at Hanford. He was just across the river. We were doing a bike path. [LAUGHTER] And all of the sudden, the skeletons started popping out. Of course, you know the American Indians used to bury their dead next to the river.
Franklin: Right.
Ines: So we couldn’t do an excavation because every time we’d do something, you know, they’re coming out. I think it’s from—I don’t know what the reason why. They’re just popping out. So finally they said, well, can’t dig anymore. What you’re going to have to do is you’re just going to have to go on top of them. [LAUGHTER] So that’s what we did! It’s amazing. I don’t know why they didn’t at least excavate it and move it or do something. But it’s Native American Indians; they have different things that they do.
Franklin: Yeah. I imagine you would’ve had an archeologist on staff when you were doing a lot of these projects.
Ines: Yes, always. We have an archeologist and—there’s another department up there, they just sit there. [LAUGHTER] I don’t know what kind of job they have. They said, yeah, that’s our job! WE sit there and watch you guys, make sure you guys don’t dig out anything. And another one—oh, I think it’s environmentalist. We have another person usually that just stands there. Usually they use college kids. And they just sit there and they look for, like, even if you disturb like little birds, or little eggs. You can’t touch anything! [LAUGHTER] They look at all of those things, so once it’s there, it’s roped off. You can’t do anything. That’s why we don’t want to see those kind of stuff in there, because it’ll delay your job completely. THere's a lot a lot a lot of wild animals up there. One time I was walking from one trailer to one trailer, I almost got stampeded by elk. I mean, like, at least 100 of them. I go, where did they come from?! [LAUGHTER] I go, wow! But they know—they’re not scared of people up there, those animals, because they’re used to it. Sometimes we have like babies that will be up there. Baby elk, baby deer, will just be walking up there.
Franklin: Right, because they’re all protected on the reservation.
Ines: They’re protected.
Franklin: They can’t be hunted there.
Ines: Yeah, and for some reason, I think they know. [LAUGHTER] Like the elders tell them, oh, we’re okay here. [LAUGHTER] Go beg. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Yeah, that’s always—I do tours with the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, and we’re out on Site, when we’re lucky, we see them, and if we’re really lucky, we get close. I think about people that go up to the mountains to hunt and pray that they get really close—you know, half as close to an elk as we do. Yeah, it’s really—Hanford’s kind of a—I think you alluded to it, it’s kind of a wildlife refuge in many ways, kind of accidentally. Because they never—it’s just the nature of taking all that land away for plutonium production that made it kind of a wildlife sanctuary.
Ines: Yeah, well, you know, with this radioactive thing, you never know. I mean, they always say that this area might be clean. But wildlife, they fly in there. They eat the stuff, and they go everywhere.
Franklin: Right, they’re not bounded by that invisible line on the map.
Ines: Yeah. They don’t get a badge. They don’t get a dosimeter. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: You always had a dosimeter when you were out there, right?
Ines: Yes. If you ever work—if you work in that type of environment, of course, you have to have one. It depends on the level of exposure you’re going to get; you have different types.
Franklin: I wanted to ask you, how long were you in the apprentice program? How long of a program was that?
Ines: Apprentice is usually about four years.
Franklin: Four years.
Ines: Kind of like going to college, but you get paid. [LAUGHTER] That’s another good thing about it. And you can make mistakes. Unless you kill somebody or something. [LAUGHTER] You’d probably get fired. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Yeah, I would imagine so. Where did you move next after you worked in the 200 East and West Areas?
Ines: I just kind of, basically, I’m dispatched through my union. So after—in construction, you know, you start something, it’s eventually going to end. You’re going to finish. So after that ends, they usually move you to another area.
Franklin: Right. So you were a project-based—I mean, as the needs of these different projects determined, that’s where you went.
Ines: Yes. And then of course after we built Hanford 2, which is Energy Northwest, I think around that time, it’s all cleanup by then. But I remember when I used to see all those—they used to have like a helicopter and an armored truck. Every time they produced a plutonium, they’ll be out there in the 200 Area. Oh! They built some more! [LAUGHTER] Because they’re superly guarded with a helicopter and an armored guard and a caravan of security.
Franklin: You’re talking about when they would ship out the finished product, the plutonium, the product.
Ines: Yeah. Well, something—they moved them around. It depends on where, it’s either going to go to the finishing place, and then—I didn’t even know this until later on, but they have what they call a railroad building. There’s like, I think, four or maybe six buildings, and what it is is that’s where, after they produce some plutonium, and they’re in the railroad cars, and they store them there to cool down. I’ve never seen them, for years and years. Because they’ve got big mounds of dirt. I passed by them millions and millions of times, until I worked for a contractor, what we did is we had to re-roof all the old buildings here at Hanford. And so we had to re-roof these. And of course it was radioactive so we can’t get inside until everything is clean. But they were there. I mean, they even had a big—I didn’t even know, there’s a big, huge crane in there to lift up the—I don’t know what they’re lifting, but they’re usually in the cart. And what they do is after they build it is I guess they park the cart there and get it cooled. And then once it’s cold, they transport it to wherever they want it to go.
Franklin: Wow.
Ines: Yeah. That’s a lot of—and then you know, like I worked at the 100-K East and K West. They’re about a mile long, apart. I didn’t know there was a tunnel that goes from one end to the other end. That’s a mile long. There’s a lot of tunnels in there. [LAUGHTER] One time we had—they said they were going to blow up the elevator. This is when we were cleaning up at K East. They said, we’re not going to work that weekend, because they’re going to blow it up so they can eliminate it. And of course when you blow up things, you don’t want to—it has to be a controlled blast so it doesn’t affect the whole area. Well, you know, all of our reactors out there, they used to use asbestos shingles, because it was supposed to make it cooler, I don’t know what it is. But that’s what they used for the walls. So Monday we came back to work, right? [LAUGHTER] It was funny. We’re all—our eyes were that big. They said in the meeting, they said, the blast was—everything was safe, everything was good, nothing happened. And we kind of looked and said, well, how come the shingles are all over the place? And that’s asbestos. And just like that one thing that we cleaned, K East, the pond, because that’s where they used to cool all those spent fuel, they said, when they first detected it was leaking, I don’t remember exactly what the wording was, but the guy who was explaining it said, this is the wording, they never really claimed it. They said, it wasn’t enough leakage—they said something about the leakage was not enough to make it warrant to clean it. But then he told me, yeah, it was leaking like thousands of gallons per day. [LAUGHTER] So that’s what we’re doing, we’re cleaning the whole thing. It was pretty, pretty, pretty hot when we got down there because we had to dig next to the wall and it’s at least 900 millirems or something like that. But we still had to go there. What we did is we had a dozer, and what we did is, to get close to it, we built barriers, like dirt. I pushed it and then once I pushed, we can’t stay there. Then I have to back up all the way as fast as I can. Bcause before I Got there, there was another contractor that was there, and I noticed all their machines were all parked on the side. And they’re all contaminated. I mean, they had to get—you can’t clean them, once it’s penetrated, it’s history. And they said they have like five people that got burned out every year. I mean, their allowed radioactive exposure is gone for the whole year. So they have five. So when we got there, there was only two of us that went in. I said, how you guys going to do that? There’s only two of you. So that’s how we did it. We just went there and came out, and we put barriers, dirt barriers, so we’re always being shielded. And the only thing we got was three. Which is pretty good.
Franklin: Three what?
Ines: Millirem.
Franklin: Oh, three millirem.
Ines: Yeah, which is basically not much.
Franklin: Yeah. How long did you work out at the K Basins for?
0:27:40 Ines: On and off. I think the first time I went p there is when I built a couple of buildings attached to, next to the ponds, so we can extract the old spent rods. So I built this building so they can transport it, you know. They bring the rod out—what year was that? I can’t remember. But they said that building can only be there for five years. So what it is is they extract that rod on the crane, because I had to build a crane, and then there’s a truck that comes in—this is inside the building—so everything is inside and then it loads up to thet ruck, and then it went up to the—I think they used to call it the smurf building, the blue building up there. You know, where they’d get sealed again or something like that. That was the first time I think I worked at K. But I worked at all of them. I worked at, you know, even D and DR.
Franklin: And what did you do there?
0:28:49 Ines: I think that was during the cleanup already. We were cleaning things up. So I asked them, I said, how come there’s a D and a DR? And they said, this is called DR because it’s D Replacement. And I said, what happened to the D? Well, they had a meltdown. The D had a meltdown, so they had to—kind of like what happened to Japan. I don’t know if they realy controlled it. But most of them are cocooned nowadays. We all cocooned them. I even worked at—because my dad used to tell me, he used to go to, I think it was J or A? J? I can’t remember, where they have a lot of experimental stuff with animals. You know, they—
Franklin: Oh, F.
Ines: F. Is it F?
Franklin: Yes.
Ines: Yeah, they said, yeah, you should go there. They have all kinds of animals in there, and some of them are smoking weed, some of them are doing this, some of them are being injected by radioactive. And then I had to go clean that up. That was very interesting, because they buried a lot of stuff in there where it was supposed to be clean, and they buried stuff in there, like dead animals.
Franklin: Right, the pigs, right?
Ines: Yeah.
Franklin: The pigs and the dogs.
Ines: Yeah. And it stinks.
Franklin: Yeah?
Ines: Yeah, I don’t know why they didn’t get rid of it properly, because when I was trying to clean that area, you know, make it—we’re supposed to bring it back to American Indians—Native Americans. And I started to vlean it and I was coming up with all of these vaults and tanks. And sometimes I’d open one of them, oh, it was terrible! So we’d always have to call somebody to check out what’s going on. But it’s different.
Franklin: So basically the process that you were involved in for cleaning was really just removing the contaminated earth and then where did that go, and what did you replace it with?
0:30:52 Ines: Okay. Well, basically, what we’d do is when we’d—I think the big scenario when I did, they called it the Big Dig. They usually used me for—I’d do a lot of experimental stuff. I’d do the first thing. And so what we did is we had the Big Dig, and that was at B. The hole that I dug, there’s two of them. It’s like four football fields on the bottom. And it slopes out, so it’s a pretty good size. There’s two of them. Becaues by the time I—and what they do, is we separate—we have people that are checking which one is clean, which one is dirty. So we segregate them. So the one that’s dirty, it gets hauled out. And that’s where all of this trucks that you see that have linings and tarps, those are the contaminated ones. Usually the one that’s clean is usually what we put back to backfill. And then they find a place where they can get some more dirt that’s clean. There’s a lot of dirt out there. I even built what they called a mulai-mulai. Have you ever heard of mulai-mulai?
Franklin: Yeah, the ridges.
Ines: The ridges.
Franklin: The upwellings.
Ines: Yes.
Franklin: They’re leavings of the Ice Age floods.
Ines: So that was at N.
Franklin: Yeah.
Ines: And my job—are you ready for this?—is to rebuild the moolai-moolai that was taken up.
Franklin: Really?
Ines: Yeah! And I said, so—and the mulai-mulai is an Indian name. It’s an Indian name that means, god made this. So I had to rebuild this mulai-mulai. And the engineer got the design so I know where to start and the height and the dimension. So finally I told them, you know what? By the time I build this thing, it should be Lito-Lito, because I made it! [LAUGHTER] Not mulai-mulai. So everybody was laughing at me. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow. I’ve never—how many did you build? Like, how—do you have an idea, an estimate—
Ines: How many mulai-mulai I built?
Franklin: Yeah, how long did you work on that?
Ines: Well, I can build—you know, they’re not that big. They’re probably less than this building, I mean this studio. They’re not that big. Some of them are a little bigger. But they’re not—I’m guessing probably the highest is maybe ten feet.
Franklin: did you have photos to work from or--?
Ines: No.
Franklin: How did you approach that?
0:33:38 Ines: What do you mean by photo? We have plans, you know, blueprints. Is that what you meant?
Franklin: Yeah, I mean, I’m wondering—
Ines: Yeah, it’s engineered. You know, it’s surveyed, the outline is surveyed, and then they give—it’s kind of like building a golf course. Have you seen a golf course? You know, they have like mounds. Same thing. Kind of like, if you want to make a nice garden in your yard, you know, you make like a pattern, that’s where you start and you build up. It’s the same thing. It’s surveyed. But nowadays everything is satellite surveyed. SO you just put your rod, and that’s how high it goes.
Franklin: So were these mulai-mulai that had been taken away for the construction of N Reactor?
Ines: Yes.
Franklin: There are still some natural ones.
Ines: Yes. There are some still in there.
Franklin: That’s just so interesting that they would re-put that there, because now it’s a manmade mulai-mulai.
Ines: Lito-Lito. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: And you would know. It’s just fascinating to me, because you would know—I mean, you would’ve restored it, but you would know and it would also be—that’s really interesting.
Ines: Yeah, isn’t that amazing? Well, you know, in the Philippines we have what we call a chocolate mountain. Have you ever heard of that?
Franklin: No.
Ines: Kind of a similar thing. There’s millions of them up there. But they call it chocolate mountain because of the Kisses. You remember the chocolate Kisses? That’s why they call it a chocolate mountain.
Franklin: Oh, interesting.
Ines: Yeah, very.
Franklin: I want to go back to a couple things. So these railroad car areas, you mentioned where they would store the hot railroad cars.
Ines: Yeah, the one they just—
Franklin: Were these like large tunnels, or—
Ines: Oh, no.
Franklin: Especially if it had dirt on it—
Ines: Well, no, the dirt is a barricade to hide those buildings. The buildings are pretty big. They’re probably the size of Floyd.
Franklin: Okay. SO it was a building.
Ines: Yeah.
Franklin: But you couldn’t see it from the roadway—
Ines: No.
Franklin: --because it was obscured by a—and was it manmade dirt?
Ines: Yes, yes.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Ines: It’s all manmade, yeah.
Franklin: Okay. Wow.
Ines: Yeah, they were hiding it.
Franklin: And how many did you say there were?
Ines: I think there were at least—I’m guessing—it’s been a while—either four or five, because, you know—
Franklin: And what area were they in?
Ines: They’re in between East and West, 200 East and West.
Franklin: Okay.
Ines: So that’s why—I’d never seen it! Because you go through, when we go to the H, it’s one way, and then the other way is you go to the West area. You pass by—it’s in between, it’s right over there.
Franklin: Interesting. Right, because the cars would take the fuel from the reactors to the 200 Area, drop it off, processing, and then I guess, I’m assuming, that’s where then they would stage those rail cars to let them cool down.
Ines: Yeah, that place used to be railings all over the place. Sometimes when I’m doing some cleaning up, I’d end up with, oh, there’s railroads here. And they’re all interconnected, all of those reactors.
Franklin: Right.
Ines: Yeah, rails was the form of transportation.
Franklin: Yeah, yeah, for the fuel, yeah. I wanted to ask you about your time spent working at WPPS in the early—what was that like to work on a commercial—was working on a commercial reactor different than working—
Ines: It was very, very different. Because, you know, it’s not really a—it’s not like the Hanford, the government job that we had, because it’s kind of outside of it. What it is is you had, oh, we had different contractors. There’s so many different contractors working on Hanford. You only had one. This was you’re working with like 12, 20 different contractors. So, everybody’s different. So like our meeting would be just on our company. And then our place—it was really, really different. Because that was the year when we had a lot of people that came form—I don’t know why, there were a lot from Texas. They were Texas—I mean, everywhere I looked, they were from Texas. And then of course like the parking lot is full of different trailers. But the one thing that really stuck to me when I was working there that was really, really different is they used to have portable brothel.
Franklin: I’ve heard things of this nature about WPPSS construction.
Ines: You’ve heard, and it was the truth. It was the truth. There were trailer—there were campers out there. And that was just so—oh. But I was young, plus I didn’t have enough money. [LAUGHTER] And those guys—I mean, a lot of them make—I mean, we make tons of money out there. But that was really something else. That they—ad then another thing they do, is they all have this gambling—everybody’s—each group has their own just gambling thing. Like in this one cuhte that goes from the bottom all the way to the top—because I run the cranes—and most of the time I’m not busy, I run the overhead cranes. One of our crane guys runs the chutes that goes from the bottom all the wy to the top, because there’s no crane there. So he has like a little portable crane. So I went to visit him, and then I looked in that chute, and I looked down there, there’s this big, huge circle. Kind of like a target. It had like different size rings in it. And in the middle is dirt, and I know there’s a lot of coins down there. And I go, what’s that for? He said, oh, yeah, you throw your coins in there and you put your name, and at the end of the week, whoever’s close to the center takes the whole pot. I said, you’re kidding me! [LAUGHTER] And then they even have contests of rolling your coins on the dirt and whoever gets the farthest wins the pot. And I’m not a gambler, and I don’t really play too many game cards or anything like that, card games. I learned a lot from that place. [LAUGHTER] And this is another thing. This is earlier. My first day there at work. In our building, I walked in there, it’s probably half the size of this. And as soon as I walked in the door, that whole wall, that whole ceiling was filled with penthouse pinups. I go, wow! You can’t do that anymore, because it’s illegal.
Franklin: No, you couldn’t.
Ines: [LAUGHTER] So, I walked in so I just kind of stood there because I’ve never seen some of them. So I was looking, and then finally the boss—what are you doing there? We’re having a meeting! I said, I was looking to see if my girlfriend’s in here. [LAUGHTER] It was different then.
Franklin: Yeah, it really kind of sounds like the Wild West of construction.
Ines: It was. As a matter of fact, sometimes when they’d tell me, well, I don’t have nothing to do. Yeah, you don’t have nothing to do? Just go walk around. What do you mean, walk around? Just walk around. Just explore. [LAUGHTER] Really. Yeah. But then one time, they told me, they said—just like I said, I run the overhead cranes, and one day they come up to me and said, we need somebody to do the crane test on tower something. And I was new, so I was just kind of looking around. And they said, nobody else volunteering, so I guess Lito’s going to do it because he’s different. So I said, okay, I guess. So I went. And I went in there, and as soon as I went in there, they got bleaches built on three sides. Now all of the sudden, it’s kind of like a boxing game or something. SO they all got filled up with all these people in suits. What’s going on? And then a camer shows up. Just like that. So it was a big thing. And then I have to deal with an ironworker, because they’re the ones that used to do the signals all the time for the cranes. So finally I looked at the thing and then there’s this big, huge obstacle in the middle that I know if I run the crane northeast, east, west and south, whatever, I’m going to have to cross that or go on top. Well, you know, you have the big hook, right? And I know I’m going to go in there and it’s going to crawl and drag on top of that. So I’m going, well, that looks unsafe. And so finally I said, no, I was going to go ask him, to make sure he checks it. So finally I got to the control and it was red-tagged. You know, the thing where they put tags if there’s something wrong with it. If it’s red-tagged, you can’t touch it. So I said, well, I can’t touch it. And the ironworker said, what do you mean, you can’t touch it? It’s red-tagged! That means there’s something wrong with it or whatever. You don’t know; I don’t know. And so he got mad at me, and he said, I’m going to talk to your boss. Blah, blah, blah, we’ve got all these people out here, these are all big dignitaries, they’re supposed to see both of us do the work. And I said, well, I’m not going to do it until you do that. He goes, oh, okay. And finally they got a superintendent—they called somebody, and he signed, and said, okay. So I finally got it started. And I said, now another thing you need to do is you need to check on top of that thing, make sure there’s nothing on top. So he got mad. You know hwo construction people, they cuss and they yell and they throw stuff. I said, I don’t care what you do, but check it. He said, argh! It’s clean. I said, okay. So of course, he’s the one that does the signaling. So he’s walking, he’s checking the thing, he’s giving me the signal, then final yit’s time to go and drag the big hook on top of the thing. Of course, I can’t see the other side. And I was doing it, and he keeps saying, yeah, keep going, keep going. He was on the other side. Guess what. There was something on top of that thing. And it fell, almost hit him. And I said, there you go. [LAUGHTER] He goes, argh! It didn’t hit me. [LAUGHTER] And there was all kinds of stuff in there. That’s amazing, though—and then, eventually after that thing was built, one of my high school friend that was in my wrestling team, he became a lawyer. Of course you know at Hanford when they were building that thing, a lot fo people were punching in at two, three different time clocks. They did that. And so this high school friend of mine—and that’s what he was—he just got out of college and he said, my company’s auditing the Hanford, Energy Northwest for what they did. So I told him, I said, it’s true. [LAUGHTER] Yeah. People are punching in at different times. I mean, it was just amazing what they did there.
Franklin: You mean people were turning in like multiple—like claiming—
Ines: Yeah.
Franklin: --like that they’d worked different hours, or—
Ines: No, no, not just—they were punching in on three different time clocks. Not just—
Franklin: Not just the one, but—
Ines: Yeah.
Franklin: And then they would get paid for three times the—
Ines: Yeah. I was there, too, when they did that. You know, when people were saying, they’re time-clocking in but they were saying that they worked—I was there, because I knew who they were.
Franklin: Wow. Ewre you still with WPPSS when the default happened and the whole thing shut down?
Ines: Oh, you mean the Hanford 1 and—
Franklin: 1 and 4, yeah.
Ines: Oh, yeah.
Franklin: Were you there when—
Ines: Yeah.
Franklin: I wonder if you could describe that. How did people take it, and what happened to the work?
Ines: Well, basically, all the people that was involved in it was devastated because they lost their job. I didn’t really care. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Why is that?
Ines: I was just an apprentice. Because I know eventually I’m going to get a—what I did is they transferred me to build an airport, someplace out there by the dam? I think it was called Electric City.
Franklin: Okay.
Ines: So while they were hassling that problem, I was working someplace else. And I hate—I don’t travel. So that’s why I didn’t stay that long. I said, there’s nothing here! So I came back.
Franklin: Okay.
Ines: Yeah. Because the problem with working with unions, they send you this and that, and you have to take it. But now that I’m a little bit senior in the ladder, I can choose. And of course, I can hassle for my work. Because I have so much background; I’ve worked with this, this, this, this. I usually just call them up.
Franklin: And so after you came back, you spent most of your time just working on cleanup.
Ines: Cleanup.
Franklin: Right?
Ines: Yeah, after that, it was after the—when they were doing the Hanford 2. After that, it was—and it was tough security then. When ti was top secret. I mean, you can’t go—my first day at Hanford in the security at Wye Barricade, and I noticed, why is everybody leaving their key in the trunk? Well, because you’re supposed to open the trunk, they check all your lunch bag, they look underneath, they got the dog. You know, you have to—it was security. And I was wondering why they leave—all those people leaving their keys in their trunk. Then I finally realized, so they don’t have to go out. [LAUGHTER] Nowadays, you can just push a button. But I was wondering about that. I said, those guys are stupid, leaving their keys in there. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: I’m wondering if you can talk about the reaction to the shutdown in the late ‘80s when Hanford was told to stop producing. I’m wondering if you can talk about how that affected you or other workers in the community.
Ines: It didn’t affect me at all. You know, because, like I said, they always sent me out—one of ym biggest job is, I was a tech engineer, so I usually do the layout, I do the surveying, that kind of stuff. So I’d do all of that kind of stuff. And that’s in demand. Everywhere you go, they always need somebody on that field. That’s why I kept doing that. Mots people don’t like that, because you’re responsible. [LAUGHTER] You’re the main dude. I mean, yeah, that’s where we start, that’s where we dig, and that’s where we put thigns. People didn’t like that. A lot of people that are in construction, that’s the reason that they’re in construction: they didn’t want to go to college. So the job I had was almost pretty safe at that time. They just want to run the machine. You don’t need to know how to add or subtract or some things like that. The people, I mean, in general, the Tri-City community was devastated because that’s when a lot of people moved out. That’s the best time to buy a hosue. That’s when I bought my first house, is that era. Because everything was cheap. The house that I bought was in the market for over two years. So I got it dirt-cheap.
Franklin: Did you buy a house here in Richland?
Ines: Kennewick.
Franklin: Kennewick, okay.
Ines: Yeah, I always lived in Kennewick.
Franklin: Okay. What do you want to remember about the Chernobyl incient and how that affected Hanford and the Tri-Cities?
Ines: Well, I think that was just kind of like a wakeup call for us here, because it can happen here. But most of the people will tell me, oh, Hanford is safe. They said, everything is—you know, they tell us everything is safe here. Everything is—but I’m sure Japan was the same way. But they brainwash you a little bit.
Franklin: Yeah?
Ines: Tell you, oh, it’s okay here. Just like, well, I was working at the Vit Plant. So you remember aobut the collapse of the tunnel?
Franklin: Yeah, I was out onsite.
Ines: Onsite? That was at 200 East.
Franklin: Yeah.
Ines: Well, the Vitrification Plant is just the other side of the fence. Well I was there. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Okay.
Ines: So when it collapsed, I didn’t even know. I was there in my rig, and I said, why is everybody running? [LAUGHTER] You know, we always have false—we always have drills. So finally I said, is this a drill, or is it for real? So I called the radio, I said, for real! I said, oh! So you’re supposed to shut everything off and go to the nearest building, take cover. So I did. Which is close to the gate. Which is, where the tunnel is, you can see it from where I was. Well, I’m diabetic. And so I was there for over two hours. Because we stayed there for a long time. Of course, we have to turn off all the air conditioner. So I was hot. And of course, there’s no food. So it’s not good. SO finally somebody from our main building said, you know, if you guys have any diabetic people make sure you have him here because we have all the things you need, like water, whatever. So I said, well, I guess I’m going to go. And they let me go. Eventually, what, three weeks ago, a month ago, they said that there was contamination release. And they let me out. [LAUGHTER] To go to this other building. So now I’m having problem with my chest. I’ve been coughing lately. So I don’t know, hopefully there’s nothing.
Franklin: Yeah. Wow. That’s a really—
Ines: It’s really—I was at K—was it K? No, it was D. Could be N. [LAUGHTER] I’ve done all—but I was backfilling this trench that goes from what they call the dam that dumps off the cooled water—it’s supposed to be cooled and cleaned water—that dumps out into this trench into the river. It was like 40 feet deep. It’s deep. The concrete’s been gone. They took it off. So I was backfilling it. So I’ve got this big huge truck. You’ve seen those big trucks? With big, huge tires about the size of this building. And then they dump the dirt in front of me and then they push it towards this hole. So one time I was, in the morning, I had this guy that does the thing, I was helping him take out the ropes so nobody will go through there. We usually put a big berm at the end of my job so nobody will fall in. So I was helping him put the ropes. So he set his Geiger counter, and I was telling him, why don’t you guys once in a while survey that? Make sure what we’re doing—oh, it’s—they swear, it’s clean. It’s clean-clean. This guy looks at me and goes, yeah, see if you can just help me. So he puts his thing on the ground and then we were moving that and all of the sudden his machine went [TRILLING]. He looked at it, and he picked it up and said, you didn’t see that. Okay. [LAUGHTER] That’s a lot of stuff out there that’s really weird.
Frankli: What would’ve happened had you had seen that? Would they have had to stop work?
Ines: Yeah.
Franklin: IS that, you think, the reason for some of that behavior?
Ines. Yeah. Yep. The same thing out at Hanford, you know, besides Hanford. If you find a big dinosaur bone, it’ll shut the whole job. That’s your livelihood. That’s everybody’s livelihood.
Franklin: Right. But it’s also—in the case of bones or burials or cultural sites, though, it’s also a resource that was just discovered, right?
Ines: Yeah.
Franklin: There’s value in that thing that was discovered.
Ines: It’s a different industry.
Franklin: There’s a real tension between—
Ines: Yeah.
Franklin: Right, the project—the construction forces and then the cultural forces. Did you ever see—were there ever any big disagreements—any real tensions that erupted in any of the jobs you were at, between like cultural people and like construction people or kind of—
Ines: no.
Franklin: No? Okay.
Ines: Not really. I’m sure they—after they find out, they probably hash it out someplace and they probably yell at each other. [LAUGHTER] But they don’t show us that.
Franklin: Sure. Let’s see here. And so, ah, so you’ve really just kind of been—and you’re still working. Like, you’re semi-retired?
Ines: Semi, yeah.
Franklin: Okay. What does that mean?
Ines: That means I’m not working that much. Yeah.
Franklin: Okay, but you still are like—
Ines: I’m still—I can still go.
Franklin: You’ve done some work on the 324 recently?
Ines: 324—well, no, that was a couple years ago.
Franklin: Oh, a couple years ago, okay. Where was the last place that you worked?
Ines: The Vitrification Plant.
Franklin: Oh, right. With the tunnel, earlier this year.
Ines: The tunnel, yeah.
Franklin: And what were you doing out there?
Ines: At that time, I was running what you call a vacuum truck, because we can’t use big machinery to dig stuff and rip everything out, so we used this—that’s why just—why are we running this? This is a truck? It’s supposed to be Teamster. Look at it, it has a wheel. But we run it. And it’s pretty neat, because it sucks everything. It’s amazing at what it does, but it doesn’t ruin anything. Unless you keep jabbing on something. But it’ll even go through those what we call, kind of like a light concrete, it’ll penetrate it.
Franklin: Wow. How many reactors did you work on cocooning? Do you remember?
Ines: I think basically all of them. I did all of them, because—
Franklin: What was the process for that?
Ines: Well, the process, first you have to clean all around it. There’s a lot of contamination. You know, when they’re building—when they were doing the reactor itself, they used to be all kinds of chemicals. You know, like ammonia and all kinds of stuff. The process is you have to clean around it first. Then you had to do—that’s why we had that big rig, too, is we were looking for—I can’t remember what chemical that is—and it’s weird, I never seen it before-but if it gets contact with water, it turns green, like a lawn. It’s really—it’s bright green! That’s why sometimes when we’d get done, the next day we’d come back and say, ho, there’s green stuff in there! So at least we know where it’s at. Just like—they gave us a perimeter where to dig. When we start getting done, we saw this one area, the slope is still green. So it needs to go farther that way. There’s a lot of contamination. Because they used all kinds of defunct chemicals to supposedly clean those railroad carts and things like that. And they used all kinds of stuff. One time I was in B, I found a whole bunch of boron, boron balls. That’s what they used to clean the tubes for the reactor. I dug a bunch of those. And I go, ho, bowling balls! They’re nice, perfectly round, white—I mean, it’s white. It’s kind of—hey, there’s all kinds of stuff in there.
Franklin: And then you would have to—when you went to do the cocooning, were all the support buildings still there?
Ines: No.
Franklin: Like power houses and—
Ines: No.
Franklin: Oh, okay, so those had been--
Ines: Yeah. You work out the perimeter first, and you take all of those things out.
Franklin: All the support buildings.
Ines: All the support buildings and all of the sudden it’s just the reactor tiself.
Franklin: And then you kind of—and then what’s the next—do you remove the roof, or like, how do you get that—because now it kind of looks like a polygon. So how do you get from the big chunky reactor building down to that polygon?
Ines: Well, that’s what they do. Just like I said, we start from the outside, we take all of the support building and part of the different building is part of the support building of that reactor. The only thing that’s left there is actually the casing of the reactor. And then, of course, that’s when they put the dome in there. I don’t know what—and they tarp it [MUMBLING]
Franklin: Cool.
Ines: Yeah.
Franklin: Just a couple more questions. Kind of larger-scale questions. I wanted to ask you, what were some of the most challenging and/or rewarding aspects of your work at Hanford?
Ines: Hmm. To me, it’s probably getting all those reactors clean. That’s the biggest ting. Because that’s a big—that’s basically what our mission is, to clean everything.
Franklin: Yeah.
Ines: That’s our challenge, and we did it safely. We all went home everyday, none of us really got hurt. That was the most challenging things. And then fo course, the reward is I survived it. We all survived it. And then now we got all this monuments that we could show the people.
Franklin: What do you mean, monumnets?
Ines: Well, you know, the cocooned reactors. We could show the people the history of Hanford.
Franklin: Right.
Ines: Instead of just flattening everything out.
Franklin: Yeah, and well, now there’s the B Reactor Museum, too—
Ines: Yeah, I was there.
Franklin: Part of the park.
Ines: And we cleaned that. Hopefully they don’t say—kind of like, well, how the South are tearing down the monuments. I hope that doesn’t happen. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Yeah, that’s always sbeen an interesting connection to me. I wanted to ask you if you could describe the ways in which security or secrecy at Hanford impacted your work?
Ines: A lot of secrecy. It’s basically a lot of paperwork. And just like what they said before, you can’t talk about your job up there.
Franklin: Was that true even in the ‘80s and ‘90s? You felt like that in—
Ines: Ah, it depends on where you’re at, see? I mean, if you’re working where they produced—because I remember it was just right here, 300 Area. I didn’t evne know—and that was late. And we had to clean a basement. And I walked in there, and it’s an old, old building. You know, those big, like semi-round buildings. And it’s a shop. It’s a machine shop. So I walk in there, and I go, this is where we’re going to be working at? Yeah! So I go walk in there, and then as soon as I walked in there, there’s a door, kind of like that. And I opened it. And as soon as I stepped in there, the whole place lit up. I said, whoa, what happened? What did we do? You know? They got sirens, they got all those rotating lights and then somebody came. And said, what are you doing here? And I said, well, I’m supposed to work here. And I told him what room. And of course, I don’t know where it’s at. He said, well, you can’t just be—you have to have a special badge. I said, oh. And so finally, I worked there for a whoel week and this always happens. You have to wait. And every time I go in there, I notice everybody—they have like desks and they have all kinds of stuff, and every time we go through there, they have this big canvas or cloth and they cover whatever they’re doing. And I go, hmm, that’s odd. And then it’s kind of weird, too, but by the time I got to the stairs, it was deep. It was at least 100 feet deep. My first day there, there was lockers, old army lockers, there’s lockers all the way around that thing. And I was curious, so I start opening those lockers, and they still have unifroms, but from the Army. That’s still in there. It was odd. And then, the only thing that bothers me is on the roof, you know, like Star Wars, they have that ray gun, that goes, bzzt. And once in a while it does that. It goes, brrrrt. And I go, what? Are we in an experiment or what? But I didn’t think anything about it. So my last day there and after I got done, we didn’t have to exit in the same place. We had to exit in a different place. So we had to wait. So finally, I asked the guy who was my escort, I said, you know, today’s my last day here. I just want to ask you something. What in the hell are you guys doing here? I said, what are you guys hiding? He said, well, you know, we’re with the defense department, US defense. I said, what are you guys doing? He said, we’re researching plutonium warheads. [LAUGHTER] I go, I thought you’re not supposed to be doing that anymore. [LAUGHTER] It’s an old building. Like I said, it doesn’t even look—it’s those—but, you know? And the front of it is a machine shop. So they’re still doing it, the last time I saw that. But most of the time, all of them are gone. Another thing, my first tme here, I used to see a lot of those silos. They have holes in the ground, they have rockets. And they told me about it, but since I run around with my machines, so I drove in there. Because, what they told me, usually, in the middle of the field, there’s a bunch of trees? Tha’ts where they’re at. It’s pretty obvious, because the whole place is desert and then you see these trees around it. And it’s like in a circle or rectangular thing or square. So I went in there, and there it is. There’s silos in there.
Franklin: Right, yeah, I heard those used to be anti-aircraft batteries before they were—yeah, the Nikes, right? The Nike missile silos?
Ines: yeah.
Franklin: My last question is, what would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford during the Cold War?
Ines: We made good money. [LAUGHTER] WE made good, good money. We made good money working at Hanford. Because, you know. And everything is—and it was good. It made the Tri-Cities. Because without the Hanford Project, I don’t think the Tri-Cities would be this big. But I know the Hanford Project wasn’t the only industry here, ebcase one of the big things we have here is agriculture.
Franklin: Sure, yeah. Huge agriculture.
Ines: Yeah. And you know, without the Hanford, too, we couldn’t have gotten Battelle. Battelle is one of our biggest—my dad used to tell me, he said—because he’s the one that used to build the buildings here, and everything had to be approved. He said, you know about Battelle? If they want a building, they get it just like that. [LAUGHTER] The other corporations, no. It has to go through the proves. Battelle, yeah, if they want something, they’re going to get it. Bcause that’s where all the research was at that time.
Franklin: Yeah, that makes sense.
Ines: Yeah.
Franklin: Well, Lito, thank you so much—
Ines: Thank you.
Franklin: --for coming and talking with us. I really enjoyed your stories. They were great. Grade A.
Ines: Different, huh? [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Colorful is the word I would use.
Ines: IT’s not like working in Disneyland.
nd.Original Format
Duration
Bit Rate/Frequency
Hanford Sites
300 Area
Hanford 2
Energy Northwest
100-K East
K West
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Years on Hanford Site
Files
