tmi memories

It's the 30th anniversary (tomorrow actually-March 28th) of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident. For those of us from central Pennsylvania, who are old enough to remember those days and, in inverse proportion to the distance from the plant we then lived, it's probably one of those landmark memories-those events we clearly remember where we were, or, what we were doing when we heard. I then lived in an apartment in Manchester, Pa. that was, as the proverbial crow flies, probably 5 or 6 miles away. It was a scary time-many folks, including my parents, left town, many more loaded their trunks with their most valuable belongings, and planned escape routes and destinations. I recall visiting Goldsboro, a few-hundred people village on the York County side of the river from TMI, and watching from the boatdocks. The town was nearly emptied of it's residents but there were news trucks, cars with out-of-state tags, and civil defense vehicles everywhere, and a long line of folks, reporters I surmised, waiting to use the phone booth at the village center. It seems like the incident lasted many days, but I read today Jimmy Carter's visit, to reassure the justifiably incredulous public was April 1st, so the whole thing was only 3 or 4 days. Probably the most chilling of the many anecdotes I recall from the time, was the coincidental showing of the newly released China Syndrome at a York theater. While, just 10 miles or so away, a partial meltdown was occurring, Jack Lemmon told his costars and a packed theater-if the core of their fictitious plant melts down it will "take out an area the size of Pennsylvania..." The crowd leaving the theater was mostly quiet and stunned.

jls