In March, 1979, I was an Elizabethtown College sophomore. Despite living on campus, my family also resided in E-town. My sister, Denise, was a student at Elizabethtown High School and both parents (J. Kenneth and Carroll L Kreider) were professors at the College. Elizabethtown is located within a 5-mile radius of the TMI facility. From our family’s kitchen window, we could observe the plumes of steam pouring from both stacks at TMI. Despite being told that the “smoke” coming from the towers was water vapor, it was hard to believe that. My mother would constantly say, “That is a problem spewing out at us!”
From our family’s kitchen window, we could observe the plumes of steam pouring from both stacks at TMI.
We now know that the TMI accident occurred in the early morning of Wednesday, March 28, 1979. Initially, the news was that an accident had occurred, but that workers had everything under control and everything was contained within the plant. By Friday, the news had changed causing serious alarm as to what may have happened, how much radiation may have escaped, and how much exposure the surrounding community may have experienced. These questions could not be satisfactorily answered. The news suggested that people stay indoors with the windows closed. An official evacuation was not ordered, but Governor Dick Thornburgh advised that pregnant women and children should evacuate the immediate area until more reliable information could be obtained. I can only imagine that the College switchboard must have been inundated with telephone calls from concerned parents as to the safety of their children prompting President Mark Ebersole’s decision to close the College sending all students home and cancelling classes for a week.
It looked like a ghost town!
I was a member of the College Concert Band under the direction of Professor Otis Kitchen. The band departed that morning to travel to a Harrisburg school to present a Friday morning assembly. After the College dismissed its students to go home, my mother contacted the administration to inquire about the band’s whereabouts. After Mom’s inquiry, the College must have contacted the school and Professor Kitchen, who informed us that we are not going to perform; we are returning promptly to campus. At that point, the assembly was cancelled, we packed up our equipment and instruments, boarded our busses, and returned to an empty campus. It looked like a ghost town!
My mother and her sister, whose family also lived in Elizabethtown, decided that they would pack up their children and evacuate to their childhood home, a farm located in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, west of the Allegheny Mountains. My uncle, who was the plant manager of the NCR plant in Mount Joy, PA, decided that he had to remain in the area to manage the plant. My dad was in Washington, DC, at the time doing research at the Library of Congress.
As our family was preparing to evacuate, I remember looking out our kitchen window and observing our neighbor taking her daily constitutional past our house seemingly oblivious to the danger she may be exposing herself to needlessly. Mom’s disbelief that she would totally disregard the warnings about radiation reinforced my original assessment of our neighbor’s unconcerned dedication to her exercise routine. Perhaps we overreacted because that lady is still living today.
Mom instructed us that the windows in the car would also remain closed
With our necessities packed for departure, Mom instructed us that the windows in the car would also remain closed until we traveled through all the tunnels on the turnpike. With that announcement, I realized that was going to be somewhat of an inconvenience because it was a beautiful, rather warm spring day, and our 1972 two-door Volvo sedan had no air-conditioning. In addition, my aunt and two cousins joined mom, my sister, and me, as well as our dog, in this closed-up vehicle. Needless to say, it was a “breath of fresh air” when we were permitted to manually wind down (no electric buttons) the car windows to reduce the temperature in the car. Incidentally, there was no concern or law regulation about seat belts for four kids in the back seat.
My father returned late Friday evening from Washington, DC to find his home dark and a note on the table, which informed him that his family left for the farm. As he was driving home, he began to hear the news about the TMI disaster; therefore, the dark home and note was not a complete shock. He joined his family the next day, Saturday, at the farm. Note: cell phones were not available for instant communication at that time.
With the car loaded, they closed up the house and returned to the farm.
While at the farm, we tried to keep attuned to the news; this was before 24/7 CNN news cycles. The Saturday news reported that President Jimmy Carter planned to visit the TMI plant area on Sunday, April 1, 1979. With President Carter’s planned visit, speculation was that he may be coming to announce a full-scale evacuation. If that happens, it may be a very long time (or possibly forever) until we’d be permitted to return. My parents decided that if President Carter is visiting during this time, it would be the window of opportunity that they could safely return to our home to retrieve important items. Early Sunday morning, while President Carter was in the area, my parents decided to leave my sister and me at the farm while they returned to our home in Elizabethtown to collect the following: academic diplomas, passports, birth certificates, pay stubs to prove employment, property deeds, medical records, and car titles. Additionally, even though it was spring, they collected boots and winter coats for all of us. Finally, they thought about what kind of work they might be able to do should they need to support their family in a new location. So they also collected my mother’s sewing machine and the electric IBM typewriter (no computers, yet). With the car loaded, they closed up the house and returned to the farm.
In retrospect, jumping to that conclusion seems like a drastic perspective; however, some of my father’s background and experiences provide insight. Following World War II and during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, my father worked with processing and resettling refugees that were living in Displaced Persons camps in West Germany, Austria, and Italy, having fled their homes ahead of various armies as they fought across the European landscape. As these Displaced Persons plead their cases before the relocation representatives (of which my father served for the USA), they were questioned about their families, their education, their profession, their skills, etc. A major problem was the lack of documentation to prove education, profession, nationality, etc. Without the proper documentation to prove one’s verbal claims, my father found himself in the extremely difficult position of having to reject many persons for resettlement in the USA that he was sure possessed the skills claimed, yet could not prove. As a result, a priority of our family has always been to keep the most important documents assembled should we find ourselves needing to evacuate and become a refugee as a result of forces that are beyond our control.
Eventually, the problem at TMI was resolved, and thankfully the disaster came within a hair’s breadth of not “melting down” as occurred a number of years later in Chernobyl. After a week, listening and watching news, being concerned about the TMI situation, and enjoying time with grandparents and cousins, both families bid our grandparents and the farm goodbye and returned to Elizabethtown to resume our normal lives.
There was a casualty, however, of TMI at our home — the Purple Martins (birds).
My mother diligently maintained a Purple Martin house in our yard for many years. Purple Martins always return to their original nesting place each spring; they had arrived a few days prior to the TMI incident. Upon our return from the farm, we discovered that the Purple Martins were missing; they were no longer inhabiting the house! In fact, they have never returned! Perhaps it is a coincidence, but my mother is convinced that it is because of TMI.
In conclusion, for anyone who wishes to experience how it felt to live during this time and the industry mentality combined with their attempt to influence the media message as to the degree of danger the accident exposed the public to, watch the movie, The China Syndrome, starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, and Michael Douglas. It was uncanny how that picture was in production and opened in March of 1979 with the very storyline that unfolded at TMI.
————————————————
How the accident affected my life in the years following the accident.
When TMI was being constructed, the nuclear energy people touted how clean and efficient electric energy would be. In fact, there was going to be so much electricity generated that instead of charging us for it, they were going to have to pay us to use it! Houses were constructed relying on electric heat and cooling, an all-in-one system. Electric lines were laced underneath floors and above ceilings claiming that one’s house would be much more efficiently heated than the old technology of burning coal, gas, or oil. My aunt and uncle had one of those houses with the newer electric heat system. It was never as warm feeling as our home that was heated by oil. Finally, how many customers received payments from their electric company because they generated too much that they needed to pay people to use it? NONE. That only happened recently when customers started generating their own electricity via solar panels.
The Incident, the investigation, and the gradual exposure of more detailed information continued to dominate the headlines. I joined a busload of students from E-town College organized by my father and another professor that headed to a march on Washington to protest nuclear energy and the fact that we are creating nuclear waste that is not being disposed of safely (and really can’t be). I also remember questioning if I should even bother continuing my education at college because if we are going to die soon, I wanted to do other things and see other places in the time that we had left. As it turned out, I didn’t miss out on living the rest of my life. Also, I have taken a speculative view of the statements that the nuclear industry made over the years trying to convince us of how safe, efficient, and cost-effective nuclear energy is. My view has been proven. TMI and other nuclear plants are not providing so much energy that they needed to pay us to use it up. In fact, without the federal subsidies, they are no longer able to operate and are closing their doors by deactivating the one remaining reactor. The island upon which TMI sits was originally farmed, providing food for animals and people. With the abandonment of the plant, the island will be a cement scar in the Susquehanna River unusable by anyone else. My opinion is that as far as energy classification of the 21st Century, nuclear energy should NOT be included in the Green Energy classification.
The TMI incident remained initially in the foreground of our lives, often determining our actions (protest trips to DC). As time has passed, it falls to the background, but every so often, the events resurface. TMI is a landmark. From my parent’s house, one can still view the sky above TMI as the steam emitting from the one still operating tower fills the sky. Traveling east while crossing the bridge between turnpike exits Harrisburg West and Harrisburg East, TMI looms large as one looks to the right over the Susquehanna River. People all over the world have heard of TMI, even our son-in-law from West Berlin. When we have visitors and they learn that TMI is very close to us, we drive them out Turnpike Road towards Falmouth and stop on the ridge giving them a close-up view of our famous (or infamous) nuclear power plant.
Every year we receive a mailing from Exelon Energy distributing literature highlighting the benefits of nuclear energy
As for the required safety measures TMI was to implement following the accident, giant, yellow bull horns sitting atop steel towers dot our town and the surrounding farmland. When the initial alarm drills occurred and those horns would sound out much louder than a fire alarm, it would make you jump out of your chair and hold your ears. We were initially told that the alarm would sound a given number of times combined with a given length of time, but that if it was a real emergency, the alarms would sound a different length and number of times. I no longer remember the difference. In fact, I’ve grown so accustomed to them that I barely register them anymore when I hear the sound.
Every year we receive a mailing from Exelon Energy distributing literature highlighting the benefits of nuclear energy, how the company is contributing to the community, and what they are doing to ensure our safety. Included is a map of the TMI area diagramming the evacuation routes for households, businesses, and schools located within the 5 and 10 mile radii zones and where they are to go should an accident occur. The Elizabethtown Area School District is to evacuate to Manheim Township High School. In my opinion, that is ridiculous. If anyone has ever travelled on Route 501, they know how congested the road is regularly. If an accident at TMI occurs, despite living outside the TMI evacuation zone, frantic Township parents will be attempting to gather their own children from Manheim Township schools. Combine to that the busses of E-town students being delivered to Manheim Township HS and E-town parents attempting to gather their children from the evacuation site of Manheim Township HS. Utter chaos and gridlock will ensue.
our kitchen cabinet contains iodine pills
Finally, our kitchen cabinet contains iodine pills. Many years ago, someone “in-the-know” decided that to further provide protection to pituitary glands of those living in the TMI evacuation zone, iodine pills were available to those that were interested in them at no cost. I don’t remember receiving any instruction explaining when to take them nor any information as to their shelf life or how long these pills were effective. Do iodine pills expire? In the years since receiving these pills, our children have grown and moved away. Many more families have moved into our area. Those new people have not received their iodine pills.