My ex- was about three and a half months pregnant with our daughter. We lived in Harrisburg, about ten miles away from the site, so we weren’t TOO concerned. Then the Governor announced that pregnant women who lived within three miles of the site should leave. That was enough for us. I called my ex-‘s mother who lived in New Oxford. She drove up and took my ex- down to her house. Then next morning, she took a bus to D.C. to wait out the incident.
the place felt like a ghost town
My daughter was born in August, a healthy, beautiful baby, With elvish pointed ears, though they later developed a normal curve. She was one of the many babies who served as a control group for the babies born around that time whose mothers had lived within just a few miles — three or five — of the plant.
I worked in the Capital Complex, for the PA Department of Health. Most people had stayed, but the place felt like a ghost town with everyone figuratively holding their breaths waiting to see what would happen next.
he wore a T-shirt that read “TMI Safety Engineers: We Stayed on the Job and Saved Everybody’s Ass.”
A friend of mine called me from New York. Brian was a civilian consultant to the Pentagon, and he’d heard that there was a dangerous hydrogen bubble inside the reactor, and I should evacuate. The “bubble” story had been repudiated, so I wasn’t too worried. I said that I had been exposed to a higher level of radiation than most of the people in the area. I’d gone to my dentist for a check-up, he had taken a full set of dental X-rays.
A friend of mine worked at TMI. He never talked about what had happened, but, after the incident, he wore a T-shirt that read “TMI Safety Engineers: We Stayed on the Job and Saved Everybody’s Ass.”
A local artist named Barbie Johnson sold T-shirts that featured a map of the Harrisburg area centered on TMI. Circles marked the five mile and ten mile radius from the plant. When you bought a shirt, she marked the spot where you lived during the incident with a gold star done in fabric paint. Sadly, my shirt was lost some years ago.
Some friends and I were sponsoring a science fiction convention to be held in Harrisburg in May 1979. Artkane was a convention for science fiction art. It had been held in York the two previous years with 150 and 175 attendants in those years. But few people were registering for the Harrisburg convention. At a convention held in Baltimore in April, we put out a flyer saying why people should come to Artkane.
* Because you’ve always liked the Incredible Hulk.
* To see a black light art show that doesn’t need UV lamps
* To watch the giant ants marching on the Hershey chocolate factory
Despite our best efforts, only about 50 people attended, and we had to make up the large losses (we budgeted for 150) out of pocket.
Lew