I was a senior at Central York High School in the spring of 1979, counting down the days until high school graduation and anxiously awaiting the arrival of letters from colleges and universities to tell me whether I had been accepted as an undergraduate for the fall semester. The end of March was supposed to be a time of using spring sports to distract everyone long enough to make it to the end of the semester, thinking about who you might, or might not, ask to the prom, and trying to figure out what you would do for the summer before heading off to college. Then, Three Mile Island happened.
The first inkling that something unusual was happening was when morning gym classes started to be cancelled and students were sent to study halls or the library. Some of us who were seniors at that point had carte blanche to not always be in the classes where we were supposed to be, and we noticed people in the school who were not usually there. Activity started to happen in the gym, and then, in the late morning, we suddenly heard an announcement that we should remain in the classrooms where we currently sat. No further explanations were provided. I was in a journalism class – our teacher had a radio and we learned something was going on at the nuclear plant on Three Mile Island. We also learned that pregnant women within a certain radius of the plant (there was a lot of confusion how far the true evacuation zone extended) were advised to evacuate – and the activity in our gym was setting up an evacuation center.
Our bus driver stood up before we left the school and ordered us to not put the windows down
Eventually we were informed that an “incident” had occurred at Three Mile Island and as a precaution, school was being dismissed – as it turned out we wouldn’t return for a week. I had taken the school bus that day, unlike almost every other senior who drove to school. One enduring memory was how hot it was that day, with temperatures in the 80s, unusual for late March. By the time we got on the bus, rumors were flying about what was and wasn’t happening. Our bus driver stood up before we left the school and ordered us to not put the windows down, for fear of radiation entering the bus. I’m not sure what she thought would happen when we got off the bus to walk home, but one thing was for sure – everyone who left the bus was sweating profusely.
My family chose not to leave the area during the “crisis”– our house was just a little over 10 miles south of the plant as the crow flies. A number of my friends and their families did leave. Others did not take the situation very seriously – another enduring memory is going out to our favorite pizza joint that evening and having a couple other friends burst through the doors with gas masks on, empty two liter bottles of soda strapped to their backs, and calculators in their hands. After a quick silent sweep of the restaurant, they left.
We missed about a week of school – which meant I was home when my college acceptance letters arrived in the mail. I went on to college out of state, and worked in various places around the country until returning to Central Pennsylvania in 1998. The sight of the cooling towers in the middle of the Susquehanna still startles me when I’m driving south on I-283 and crest the hill to view the river – but it also makes me realize what an impact the TMI accident had on my life.
Ray