Area Nurses on the TMI Accident
The above article, published five months after the disaster in The American Journal of Nursing, provides firsthand accounts from two nurses who worked in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, less than 25 miles from the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. Interspersed with the nurses’ account of their experiences are sections including general medical information for mental trauma, radiation exposure, and the like, demonstrating the nurses’ conviction that information like this needed to be more accessible in the wake of the TMI disaster. Of particular interest, however, is the nurses’ account of their own thoughts and reactions in the initial days following the accident. Their words and actions speak to the broader confusion and uncertainty that plagued the response to the disaster, and provide a glimpse the disaster’s psychological impact. The nurses’ insights are of heightened value, given that they come from individuals whose profession demanded they pay extra attention to the disaster for its potentially harmful health effects.
The nurses’ reaction on Wednesday, the day TMI-2 malfunctioned, comes as no surprise. In the hours after the reactor failed, media reports swirled and Met Ed remained tight-lipped, so the nurses’ concern about “contradicting, reassuring, [and] frightening” reports is logical. The nurses also express their concern about their limited knowledge of nuclear terminology, an issue that likewise plagued the media response and public perception writ large.
On Thursday, the nurses question the reliability of the information they are receiving, emphasizing the gravity of conflicting and bad information as national attention converged at TMI.
On Friday, the nurses report that they are beginning to more fully understand nuclear terminology, indicating that a riveted public was beginning to do the same. Even so, disinformation around the accident persisted: Friday was the day that media reports surfaced about the hydrogen bubble inside the plant. The nurses describe “terror in the faces of people,” as Dauphin County residents grew increasingly concerned for their health and safety as Governor Thornburgh issued his simultaneous stay-at-home and evacuation orders. The nurses note that Friday was the day that they made tentative plans to leave the state, as many of their local neighbors began to do the same.
Saturday brought more of the same, as fear over the hydrogen bubble mounted in spite of confident reassurances from local officials. The nurses describe their own independent fact-finding, combing through reference books in an attempt to secure reliable information that media and official sources were not providing.
On Sunday, even as the hydrogen bubble scare recedes, the nurses describe ongoing efforts to plan for a total evacuation of the hospital where they work. The nurses note that up to 200,000 people may have already left the area, unwilling to wait for official sanction on the belief that local authorities knew little more than the public at large.
On Monday, as the public furor over the TMI crisis begins to recede, the nurses are left frustrated and angry about the inadequacy of emergency plans both at the hospital and in the region. The nurses’ frustration likely mirrored that of many Dauphin County residents, who had endured a week of uncertainty and fear that was exacerbated by a lack of a cohesive response plan.
In the days following, the nurses reflect on the harrowing events of the past week. As nurses, they recognize the necessity that they “learn and prepare” for potential future disaster scenarios, after their own hospital’s response proved inadequate in the days following the TMI accident. The nurses note the sheer magnitude of the disaster they just witnessed, and wonder aloud if anyone can truly be prepared to cope with the kind of disaster TMI might have been. Expressing humility and profound awe at the scope of the nuclear threat, the nurses’ words convey a nascent aversion to nuclear power, a sentiment that increasingly took hold in the nation in the weeks and months following TMI-2’s partial meltdown.
The nurses’ journal provides a compelling and intimate account of the days immediately following the disaster. On vivid display is the tremendous uncertainty that surrounded the accident, as a national media sputtered and experts and officials gave inconsistent statements. The nurses’ account also makes far more understandable the psychological trauma that befell many Middletown locals in the days after the reactor, as panic and uncertainty led many residents to weigh evacuation. In short, the Lebanon County nurses offer a highly personal and deeply insightful window into how Dauphin County residents experienced the crisis at Three Mile Island.