I remember the week of Monday, March 25, 1979 through Saturday March 31, 1979 very well. My mother worked the second shift at AMP Incorporated in a building on Fulling Mill Road….not too far from Middletown. As I was driving to pick her up early that week there was a report of an issue at Three Mile Island….and they said things were under control. I remember thinking….”What do you know…they really do know what they are doing.”
Sidney’s face lost all of its color and he left quickly.
Later in the week….on March 29, 1979…..Governor Richard Thornburgh got on the radio and TV stations to say there was a radiation leak at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant and that pregnant woman, and some others, should evacuate a certain radius of TMI. Boy was I wrong!
When that message was announced, I was at work, in the breakroom with a bunch of other employees and the owner of the business. His name was Sydney. Sidney’s face lost all of its color and he left quickly. I later learned he went home to his wife and they packed some bags and went to upstate New York. He never told anyone at work where he was going.
I remember trying to call home and the phone lines were jammed and you could not get through easily.
There was a run at the banks as people were taking money out of the banks before they left the area and some banks ran out of cash. ATM’s were not common back then.
We were told by the authorities to pack luggage and medicine and important papers and be ready to evacuate if an order was given.
I remember seeing people meeting in parking lots and switching luggage into their cars and the people hugging and kissing goodbye before they left the area….not knowing if they would ever come back.
My older brother worked for the gas company…UGI. He was told that since he was single, and had no children, that if there was an evacuation order given that he would be expected to stay behind and help turn off the gas in the Harrisburg area.
We were told by the authorities to pack luggage and medicine and important papers and be ready to evacuate if an order was given. We were told that all lanes to the highways would be turned into one-way highways out of the area. So the north and south bound lanes of I-81 would be one way going north from the Susquehanna River towards Wilkes Barre, which is where we were told we would evacuate. All lanes on the west side of the Susquehanna would be one way going south.
Surely they would not let the President of the United States of America go to TMI if it was not safe.
The government authorities were doing everything they could to get control of the situation on TMI. They were telling us that the radiation that escaped was not all that much and that things were under control. Even President Jimmy Carter came to TMI to show the people that things were okay. Surely they would not let the President of the United States of America go to TMI if it was not safe.
My one sister had a friend that lived in Tennessee. Her friend’s husband worked at a lab that tested the water that was collected from TMI number 2 reactor. Her friend called my sister and told her that the authorities were lying to us and that we should get out as fast as we could. The problem was, we did not have the resources to just pick up and go like so many others did. We had to stay here until they told us we had to go. Plus my mother did not want to leave her house. It was an extremely sad feeling to look around your house, and look at everything you owned and worked for, and to think that you would have to leave it all behind and never be able to come back to your house and to have to start all over someplace else. Only the people of Chernobyl, in Ukraine, know that feeling.
That weekend we went to the farmers market located in the Kline Village Shopping Center in Harrisburg. I remember going to Weavers Meat counter to get some lunch meat and I remember the clerk say to his customer…”Have a very radiating weekend.” I thought, well at least someone still has a sense of humor.
David