At the time of the accident, I was attending Penn State Harrisburg (Middletown) taking classes towards my Masters in Community Psychology. I lived and worked in Harrisburg.
I was also a student intern at a state/federal project called “Direction Service,” which provided resources for parents and caregivers of children with various physical and mental challenges. At the time when it appeared from some reports that the TMI plant could experience a large radiation release or even explode, I recall a social service agency in Elizabethville, northern Dauphin County, asking us to take their phone calls, as they were leaving the area. Of course, they were well beyond the 10 mile limit, and we were within it.
On the first night of the TMI event, I answered a call at work from a firm conducting an NBC news poll. One of their questions was, “Because of the accident at TMI, do you fear for your life?” At the time I responded, “No.” Again, this was during the early stages of the events. The following day, NBC’s Jane Pauley reported, “Area residents unconcerned about TMI accident.”
the county had arrangements with a local bread company to use their vans to transport people in their wheelchairs, securing the wheels with broom sticks
Soon after the TMI accident, I had to develop an idea for my masters thesis at Penn State Harrisburg. Partly because of my above referenced internship, I decided I would do research on Government plans for the evacuation of the disabled in the face of the accident. My research was a real eye-opener. I was fortunate that I was able to interview several County (several counties) emergency management officials, as well as then Mayor Robert Reid of Middletown. You should understand that prior to the time of the TMI accident, many of the county emergency management staff were political appointees. (Fortunately, that is not the case today.) There may have been one or two staff that didn’t even know which end of a walkie-talkie was up. In the face of what clearly would have been inadequate resources, one county staff told me that had a mass evacuation gone down, the county had arrangements with a local bread company to use their vans to transport people in their wheelchairs, securing the wheels with broom sticks.
After I completed all of my research, it took some time to decide how I would frame it all in my master’s thesis. I approached an advocacy group called “Open Doors for the Handicapped.” They invited me to do a presentation at one of their meetings. They had a reporter there from the local CBS affiliate named “Toni Zimmerwoman,” who interviewed me briefly. The one exchange from the meeting that sticks with me is when I described to the audience that county officials expressed future plans to obtain the names of all people in the county who were non-ambulatory or would otherwise need assistance during a mass evacuation like the one that could have taken place during TMI. The group was fairly unanimous in their resistance to this idea. They felt that if the list would get into the wrong hands, that they could be targeted as victims for robbery or worse.
Bill
