It was a normal morning at my office in Harrisburg, and I was planning to have lunch with my friend Mary. About 11:15 a.m. her husband called, and said “Tell Mary there’s been some kind of problem at TMI and she should go home right away.” He worked at Allied Pix, the photo service for the Patriot-News, so he knew about this before anyone in the general public. So we turned on the office radio and I think by then Gov. Thornburgh was verifying that there was an incident of unknown proportions.
A friend and I spent hours figuring out escape routes
So we decided that we should all go home. For me, that was a small cluster of houses near the intersection of Rts. 283 and 441 in Lower Swatara Township — just inside the 3-mile radius of the plant. I called my husband, and we discussed where to go to evacuate.
We didn’t have any children, but we did have a few cats and I had a horse boarded at a stable in Hummelstown, so there were logistics to consider. My in-laws lived in North Carolina but that seemed too much of a stretch with 3 cats. And what about my beloved horse? A friend and I spent hours figuring out escape routes with a horse trailer, stabling, feed, etc.
Were there any radiation leaks? Who knew?
Meanwhile all we knew was what was on the radio, which was precious little. Were there any radiation leaks? Who knew? There were no monitors. How would we know when to evacuate? If you didn’t have access to a radio, good luck. Where should we go? How far would be “safe”? There were no emergency evacuation procedures or emergency management plans, there was no system in place at all. Basically we felt helpless.
I remember going to a spaghetti supper at the Hershey High School that weekend, and everyone was subdued and talking about what might happen. No one within my earshot, at least, was talking about anything other than TMI, and whether or not we could or should trust anybody to tell us the truth.
Some people were nervous about planting their gardens or working with the earth.
Well, day after day went by and, while we weren’t totally sure we were out of the woods, gradually the lack of visible disaster led to a degree of acceptance. Life started up again. Some people were nervous about planting their gardens or working with the earth. Some people didn’t really want to go outside at all. But mostly, we just got back to work and moved on.
And that’s when the anger set in. After we were pretty sure we weren’t going to die real soon, a lot of people got pissed off. But that’s another story.
Susan