At the time of the accident at Three Mile Island, I was having my car serviced at a dealership near HIA. It was routine service, and I was barely late for work at the state Department of Commerce.
As I arrived, the department’s science advisor (whose name I don’t recall) was departing. The Governor’s Office had called for him to go to TMI and find out what was happening. Before he left, he assured those of us in the office that there was nothing to be concerned about.
his advice was unequivocal: “Get out of there.”
As it happened, my parents that day were coming for a visit. As it also happened, my father had worked on construction of the Enrico Fermi nuclear reactor in Michigan and knew a little about nuclear power. When he heard what was happening at TMI, his advice was unequivocal: “Get out of there.”
He and Mom had arrived at our home in Mechanicsburg by that time. They stopped just long enough to make a plan, which was to invade my brother’s home in Fairfax, VA. My wife and I stayed behind to pack a few things while my parents got back on the road.
If something happened to prevent us from returning, we had to be able to document our losses.
My strongest recollections of that day are of preparing for the possibility of losing everything. While my wife was packing, I went through our home on Simpson Street and took pictures of what we were leaving behind. If something happened to prevent us from returning, we had to be able to document our losses. While we drove to Fairfax, we looked at the countryside and wondered whether this or that would be a good place to live if we couldn’t return home. On that day, it seemed possible that a meltdown could produce a radioactive cloud, casting people’s fate literally to the wind.
I don’t recall how long we stayed with my brother and his family — the better part of a week, I believe. In those days, news was hard to find. It was long before the 24-hour news cycle and the Internet, though the story was big enough to capture some part of most newscasts. We looked to other sources of information such as the Union of Concerned Scientists. We looked for anything credible we could find.
Sadness and anger alternated with confusion and suspicion
I can’t say what convinced us to return home. Certainly the need to return to work was important, barring a truly catastrophic occurrence. Mostly, though, it was the accumulation of days in which the worst did not happen even as we struggled with disaster fatigue. Sadness and anger alternated with confusion and suspicion, creating an anxiety stew that grew less appetizing by the day. Eventually, we gave in to a wishful sense that something like normal was on the horizon.
We were right and wrong. Something like normal did return, but life is not truly normal in any community that has been colonized by nuclear power.
Tim