I remember the afternoon of March 28, 1979 as warm and Spring-like. For 2 hours after school, my Mechanicsburg H.S. teammates and I practiced softball in the sun and fresh air. No one told us that at that very moment nuclear engineers 15 miles away were still unclear as to the severity of the accident that occured at 4 am that morning, and they STILL didn’t have the situation in hand. No one said to us or anyone else in Central PA, “Hey, maybe you shouldn’t be playing outside, just in case we have an unanticipated release of radiation or a catastrophic breach of the containment vessel.” In fact, it took hours for the plant operators, GPU, to tell anyone in the surrounding area that there had been an accident. Even when they did, they downplayed it, some might even say obfuscated, or worse, had no idea what the truth was. Our elected leaders tried their best to lead us, but they received incorrect, conflicting and confusing information as well.
my Mechanicsburg H.S. teammates and I practiced softball in the sun and fresh air. No one told us…
The day following the accident was a normal day at school. That night we watched the local nightly news and it seemed like things were under control, concerning but under control. However some time that evening, my brother Blake in Chicago, called us, long-distance, and when my parents picked up, he practically yelled through the phone “What are you still doing there?!! Get out of there!” The news reports he saw were not so quick to accept the company line; reporting on credible, possible dangers that we faced. Little did we know that the company was already venting radiation and dumping radioactive water into the river.
he practically yelled through the phone “What are you still doing there?
Friday morning, that is the day that things became worrying. Governor Thornburgh urged people within a 10 mile area of the plant to stay inside. Later he urged pregnant women, and pre-school age children within 5 miles of the plant to evacuate. Talk all that day was of a hydrogen bubble developing inside the containment vessel, and there was real fear that it might explode, spewing radiation into the surrounding area and air. I can say that so calmly today, but think about an area of 25 or 50 miles around the plant, uninhabitable and radioactive for generations to come. I remember, at school that day, teachers didn’t try to conduct classes. We students spent most of the day talking to each other about the accident and the hydrogen bubble and what might happen. In mid-afternoon, many parents arrived in a hurry to pull their kids out of school. When I got home from school, quite uncharacteristically, my parents were already there. The news on the TV was on high-blast. From the news, I learned that someone in Harrisburg had set off the WWII air raid siren around midday. It may have been to warn people to stay indoors but it had the opposite effect. People streamed out of their offices in a panic, and left work. My parents were very level-headed people, so I am sure they did not stream out of their buildings and go bezerk, but they did start to think seriously about evacuating. Being smart cookies, they probably thought, well if you are asking people 5 and 10 miles from the plant to take precautions, what about those of us just outside that perimeter? Nevertheless, my parents were vacillating about leaving. My younger brother Quentin and his friends had a planned performance they were supposed to go to the next day. My parents called around and found out that some of the other kids and their parents had already left town and that helped them to make their decision.
teachers didn’t try to conduct classes… students spent most of the day talking to each other about the accident… and what might happen
They told us to pack a suitcase and to get down sleeping bags from the attic. We would be leaving and we might never be coming back. I don’t know if they actually said “we might never come back” but I knew, all the same, I might NEVER be able to come home again. That was a sobering thought for a 17 year old. Never again would I drink in the beautiful view from Shepherdstown, especially at sunset, west across the Cumberland Valley to the blue line of the mountains on the other side; or be surrounded by the sound of crickets at night and the throngs of fireflies in our backyard as we played hide-and-seek; or know the exhilaration of sailing down Hake’s Hill on a toboggan with my brothers and sisters; or the comfort of eating dinner together in our old brick farmhouse. Our neighbors and the entire history and culture of our area would be scattered to the winds, never to exist again. It would be left like “The Forbidden Zone” in the movie “Planet of the Apes” – marked with black X’s that tell the traveller ”Go no further, beyond this is death”. This may seem overwrought – but really no one knew – not the engineers at GPU, not my parents, not my neighbors, not the governor, not even Jimmy Carter knew for sure. And really once the actual investigations were complete, we came so very close to total meltdown and containment breach that it could easily have gone another way.
the entire history and culture of our area would be scattered to the winds
When my parents made their decision, they made it suddenly – We’re going now – NOW! My mom had started a roast in the electric skillet for dinner. When they decided it was time to leave, I remember so clearly that she unplugged the electric skillet, with the roast in it, and put it directly into the back of our car. She didn’t let it cool, she didn’t transfer the roast to a plastic box. There was no time for that. We hustled into the car and decided to head North-West away from the prevailing winds. My sister Sally lived in an apartment at State College with two other girls. We headed there first. As we drove up 322, we spotted another car with kids about our age, with a hand-drawn sign “TMI Escapees” (or something to that effect). It gave us some solace that we weren’t alone, other people were evacuating too. We smiled and waved as we passed by.
she unplugged the electric skillet, with the roast in it, and put it directly into the back of our car
When we arrived at my sister’s apartment, I remember her roommates leaving very quickly. We got the impression that maybe they thought we glowed. My parents had heard that Pennsylvania was opening up its State Parks to evacuees. We called and headed towards Black Moshannon State Park – 21 miles northwest of State College. By this time the weather had become rainy and cold again, and colder still in the mountains. Although we were a camping family and all owned at least one Woolrich wool jacket, we hadn’t really planned to be camping. The cabin may have been called a heated cabin but it was not warm. We sort of huddled together in all our clothing, with no TV, no radio, nothing to do, except to listen to my mother read aloud out of “We Almost Lost Detroit” – a book, that a friend had given her, a few weeks back. I think my mother wanted to learn as much as she could about the dangers of a nuclear accident. Perhaps reading to us gave her some sense of control over a situation out of her and my father’s control. As for my younger brother and I, we found it hard to listen to. At times the prose was dry and technical, at other times graphic and sobering. Mostly we just wanted to think about something else for awhile. This book described the near meltdowns and fatalities that had occured in the United States since the advent of nuclear power and was a critique of the industry. Most memorable for me was the horrifying story of an explosion in a research reactor in Idaho, in 1961. I clearly remember the description of one man, pinned by a control rod to the ceiling of the reactor. The radiation was so intense, it took 6 days before they could retrieve the body.
Mostly we just wanted to think about something else for awhile.
This was not helping my own anxiety-level. A few days of this and I decided, despite the cold and damp, to spend a good amount of time outside the cabin, wandering the shores of the lake. It was a cold and dreary time. In the meantime, the world marched on. Two days after we left home, President Jimmy Carter donned booties and visited TMI personally. It was a courageous gesture that inspired confidence. The best hypothesis about the hydrogen bubble was that it has dissipated and was no longer a threat. At the end of that week, we drove down to a big empty parking lot, by the lake, that had a phone booth. My parents decided to call friends and colleague to find out what the situation was at home and work. I called my Girl Scout leader to let her know I would miss an event that coming weekend. Through her I inquired about my friends in the troop. My friend Vicky and her family had not left. Her dad was a local elected official, and her brother was a volunteer fireman. I imagine, even if they had wanted to leave, they felt a duty to stay and help if they were needed. I think I first realized then, the sacrifice offered by those who go into public service and our first responders. My parents realized they had to return to work and we had to return to school. We stayed till we absolutely had to go, arriving home Sunday evening. We had been gone for 9 days.
We stayed till we absolutely had to go
Most people had not evacuated and had continued on with their lives, going to work and to school. Once the immediate danger seemed to be past, they put the accident behind them. I think a lot of people who lived in this area went into a kind of denial – maybe they wouldn’t or couldn’t leave their home, even if the view from their back porch was of the cooling towers. Faced with the prospect that they couldn’t leave, they did the only thing they could: they told themselves there was no danger, and that the authorities would surely protect them and tell them if it was dangerous. They shrugged off the possibility of long-term health effects from the unquantified radiation that had been released into the water and air, and they ignored the danger of a nuclear plant continuing to operate in their midsts, and carried on with their lives. Sometimes denial is the only way to get through the day.
Sometimes denial is the only way to get through the day.
In the immediate aftermath, my parents began to drive to Ashcombe’s Dairy to buy their milk – more confident of where that milk was coming from, than from other local dairies that might mix milk together from areas near TMI, as well as in directions plumes of radiation had likely travelled. They began a crash course in learning all they could about nuclear power. They became active in TMI-Alert and the Environmental Coalition on Nuclear Power. A year or two later there was a rally at the State Capitol to commemorate the accident and keep the awareness of the dangers of nuclear energy in the public’s eye. My brother and I were enlisted to sell sandwiches throughout the crowd to help defray costs for the organizers. I remember that Pete Seeger came and sang at the rally. I was standing about 10 feet away. I was touched that someone, outside of the area, remembered us, because the rest of the world seemed to have forgotten.
The accident continued to touch my life for years to come as my parents remained active in the anti-nuclear movement. When hearings began, to decide if the undamaged Unit 1 should reopen, my dad began to paint messages on stretched canvas and mount them on our porch roof, as his protest against the potential plant-reopening. One sign read “Keep TMI Shut”. We lived on a busy corner and when people asked where I lived, I just said “You know the house with the sign?” and they always did. Not everyone approved of my dad’s signs: a small bullet or BB gun hole appeared in a downstairs window about that time; and one day, as I stood at the mailbox to get our mail, a man in a car swerved dangerously, to spray gravel at me and shout obscenities out his window.
We got lucky
Seven years later, in April 1986, my parents were visiting me in France, where I was working. We were travelling on a train – a french man sat next to me reading his newspaper, and my parents faced us. “What does that say?” my mom and dad asked with concern, pointing to the man’s paper. I turned and read the headline “Accident Nucléaire à Chernobyl”.
The tragedy of Chernobyl, which continues to this day, brought home the horrors of a complete nuclear meltdown, and keenly reminds me of the day my family evacuated, not knowing if we would ever be able to return. Thankfully, the TMI accident paled in comparison to the Chernobyl accident, but of course, that is not hard to do. Chernobyl (and Fukushima) remain a vision for me of what could have happened here in Central PA , and thank God, did not. We got lucky.
Wendy