Joseph P. Jablonski Interview, 22 February 2005

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TT:I don't know if you can recall this but how often would there be problems with the inner alarm? I mean the inner alarm would seem like less of a problem than the outer alarm...
JJ:Right, they were mostly outer alarms, unless, like I said, somebody got too close to the vibration, the farmers plowing their land, but that didn't happen too often. Usually, when there was an inner alarm you more or less figured somebody's playing games with us—somebody's teasing us or something's malfunctioning, which when they did that, they had to actually post a Camper Team there until they could get a maintenance team.
TT:So when you got an inner alarm it was serious? You knew you were going to respond because it's not going to reset itself? It was just the perimeters that reset.
JJ:Yeah.
TT:OK. Let's just walk through what you can recall. You had been out there all night; it was pretty early in the morning...
JJ:Well we were...
TT:How did you first hear about this? Were you seeing anything? Over the weeks before that or weeks after that were you seeing strange stuff in the sky?
JJ:No, I never saw anything prior to that, no. I had heard stories about the bases up there, about mutilated cattle—Camper Teams, you know, finding mutilated cattle.
TT:At Minot?
JJ:I don't know if it was Minot.
TT:But, you had been out there, how did you first hear about this?
JJ:About this incident? Well, this team had stopped, like I said, to gas up, pick up food...
TT:That maintenance team.
JJ:Yeah, and whatever else they needed there, I don't know, paperwork or whatever you know, 'cause they had come by bus I believe and, they were just loading up, they fueled up, or vehicles, not busses. Actually, their vehicles, trucks and whatever and we were all in the facility and, like I said, within a half hour, seems to me like a half hour they were screaming on the radio...
TT:Do you recall where they were headed for?
JJ:That's November-7.
TT:OK, you do recall that.
JJ:See, you're saying November-7. I know it was one of the most visible from the LCF. It was almost in direct line...
TT:The base would have been just to the left of it I would think. You could see the base, right?
JJ:Minot? The air base? No.
TT:Oh, you couldn't at all.
JJ:Oh, no. (laughs) I forget how far it'd be...
TT:No, what I'm saying, at night, you could see the glow of it?

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