ML19338B907
| ML19338B907 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crane  |
| Issue date: | 08/08/1979 |
| From: | Jason Wright PENNSYLVANIA, COMMONWEALTH OF |
| To: | |
| References | |
| TASK-TF, TASK-TMR NUDOCS 8001300390 | |
| Download: ML19338B907 (94) | |
Text
4 COMM0!TJEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES HOUSE SELECT COOIITTEE - THREE MILE ISLAND In re:
Verbatim record of meeting held in the Ma,jority Caucus Room, Main Cap _.ol Building, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, August 8, 1979 10:00 A. M.
HON. JAMES L. VRIGHT, JR., Chairman Hon. Bernard F. O'Brien, Vice Chairman Hon. Nicholas B. Moehlmann, Vice Chairman Hon. Eugene Geesey, Secretary e3 IIEMBERS HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE - THREE MILE ISLAND
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Hon. James D. Barber Hon. Stephen I. Lehr Hon. Reid L. Bennett Hon. Joseph C. Manailler Hon. Kenneth E. Brandt Hon. Marvin E. Miller Hon. Kenneth J. Cole Hon. Harold F. Mowery, Jr.
Hon. Ronald Cowell Hon. Martin P. Mullen Hon. Mark Cohen Hon. Jeffrey E. Piccola Hon. Villiam DeWeese Hon. Samuel Rappaport Hon. Rudolph Dininni Hon. Stephen R. Reed Hon. Donald U. Dorr Hon. John E. Scheaffer Hon. A. Carville Foster, Jr.
Hon. C. L. Schmitt Hon. Stephen F. Freind Hon. Ted Stuban Hon. Ivan Ithin Hon. Noah W. Wenger Hon. William K. Klingaman Hon. Paul J. Yahner itLSO PRESENT:
Hon. Gerald J. McKelvey Marshall Rock Fred Taylor, Counsel Peg Foran, Administrative Assistant Bob Hollis O
D-A M. M Ame Ro s t...J p of...;oo.1 R.po t..
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1-a INDEX NAME PAGE Fred J. Rc,ck, Chairman of Franklin County 3
Commissioners J'ere Gonder, Director of Err.ergency Management 4
Major General Richard M. Scott, Adjutant General 52 of State of Pennsylvania V
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CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
The meeting of the House Select Committee on Three Mile Island will come to order.
For those of you who are putting your jackets on, it might be more com-fortable to leave them off.
I The charge given to this Committee by the House was planning to review the emergency managemen.t/ of the various governmental 4
bodies.
We have heard from the emergency management directors j
from three counties adjacent to TMI and we have heard from the county, Beaver County, which is adjacent to a nuclear plant in 1
the western part of the state.
This, I think, is probably our last or next to the last emergency management meeting with local government.
We have with us today two witnesses from a host I
county, Franklin County, Mr. Jere Gonder, who is Director of 4
Emergency Management of Franklin County, and Mr. Fred Rock, i
who is Chairman of the Franklin County Commissioners.
They will be followed by the Adjutant General of Pennsylvania, l
General Richard Scott, who will be on hand a little later.
Will Mr. Gonder and Mr. Rock take seats up front here please?
Before you gentlemen sit down would you be kind i
enough to raise your right hand.
j.
JERE H. GCNDER and FRED ROCK, called as witnesses, being duly sworn, testified as follows:
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.I CHAIRMAN. WRIGHT:
We would kindly appreciate a statement from one or both of you regarding your experiences as a result of TMI, what your role was as a host county and any problems that you may have had in trying to fulfill that role and any suggestions that you may have for making that role easier for you and your constituents in future years in case we ever have another emergency.
I would appreciate, as you are making a statement, you identify yourself for the stenographer.
MR. ROCK:
Fred J. Rock, Chairman of the Franklin County Commissioners.
Certainly, as role of Commissioner,'you have to know the true situation in order to make decisions.
I am opeaking here this morning more or less as a role of a
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County Commissioner and Jere will speak as a role of a Civil Defense Director.
I can remember very well during the week it started March 31st and ended April 4th, our biggest problem was to know, to try to know exactly what was happening at Three i
Mile Island so we-could -- in order for us to give directions to our Civil Defense Director, we had to know exactly what we felt was going on at Three Mile Island.
Certainly, it is very
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confusing for us the way we would read the media, like maybe on Sunday or Monday different statements from federal and state
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representatives who talked about the condition of Three Mile Island.
And then the next morning we would go in and Jere would L
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They were conflicting stories.
And cer-tainly, when you get conflicting stories and there is doubt in your mind really what the conditions are, you are not apt to really maybe given all the -- concentrate on really doing a good job.
In order to do a good job, you have to have faith in what you are doing, and certainly, when you have conflicting reports, it is hard for any government body to conc ntrate to do that job.
I know, it is not only my thinking but it was the thinking of all other individuals like your supervisors and your town councilmen, they were confused of what was happening at Three Mile Island.
I only hope in the future that you can somehow, the news media as well as the State Emergency Manage-ment Aid certainly came out with a true picture of what is happening so we can coordinate our efforts in Franklin County to do a job.
Because we want to do a job, we were a host county to Cumberland County and certainly we wanted to do the best job that we could possibly do.
And I feel in the future if you can get a true picture of what is going on, you can do a better job.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
Mr. Gonder.
MR. GONDER:
I'll start with a quarter of eight on the 31st of March.
At a quarter of eight one of my dispatchers O
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called me by telephone and informed me that the State Office of Emergency Management was calling and wanted me on the tele-phone.
CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
What time was that again?
MR. GONDER:
At a quarter to eight on March 31st, a Saturday morning.
And I immediately started dressing and at eight o' clock I was one-half block from my office and he came on the radio to me in the car and said, that Deputy Commirsioner, Deputy Director, Craig Williamson of the Stata Emergency Man-agement Office was on the telephone, he held the line and when I got into the office Craig told me that he was activating Franklin County, the Emergency Operations Center, my staff, to
\\_f formulate plans for preparation of performing the job as a host county for Cumberland County.
We would do everything that Cumberland County needed.
In order to facilitate our shelters as a host county, at that time was not known whom, but approxi-mately 25,000 and upwards of citizens of Cumberland County.
Later on in the day we found out exa.ctly what areas were coming into Franklin County and we started working.
I have no staff.
All my plans at that time were written in -- I print, I do not write longhand.
And since the conversation was on the radio, a lot of my friends, whom was in the fire service, which at one time I was an active volunteer fire fighter in Chambersburg as
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well as a professional fire fighter, they started coming into help me.
And by checking back with all the school superinten-dents, which in Franklin County we would use the schools for our shelters.
The reason for that is in a school you have a cafeteria, you have a gymnasium, you have all the rooms, you have shower facilities, you have lavatory facilities.
Therefore,
they make excellent shelters for our type of situation as it is today.
We know in emergency management that yesteryear you were concerned with a fallouc shelter, a bomb shelter.
- Now, it is simply a fallout shelter, therefore, schools are used for that purpose.
They are not bomb shelters.
Where I fell on my lg face at to start with was all the numbers that I had of all the school districts were five day a week numbers, Monday through Friday, and this was Saturday morning.
So it took a few min-utes, I will have to admit, to get the telephone boak because I knew who was the superintendent of schools or principals of the different school districts.
We have five school districts in Franklin County.
And with telephone conversations to the school superintendents or principals, in either case, they activated the schools.
I informed them of what our mission was and con-tinuously during the whole episode I received my orders from Cumberland County.
I knew in a matter of hours exactly how many
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thousands of people we were to shelter.
All the plans were formulated, laid out, my coordinators put everything together and we were prepared to shelter 25,000 people and upwards.
We have maps.
I have two with me, which is color coded to approximate the number of people in each school and each school would have had security, each school would have had nursing facilities.
We have registered nurses in Franklin County that are not active every day workers.
They are volun-teers.
That would have been one nurse and one or two student-nurses assigned shift work in every school.
As I say, the accurity would have been handled, the township supervisors were going to handle the parking of automobiles, the vans, the buses, p) whatever the citizens of Cumberland Coun1.y would transport them-(_
selves to Franklin County with.
The school !iatrict immediately alerted their school buses, all school buses in Franklin Cotnty are not owned by the school districts, tney have contracts.
These people were also alerted; their buses, their drivers we se ready to roll. Wo. asked the position in which we had to also use oir buses to transport these people from Cumberland County.
That is why they were ready to roll.
On Saturday afternoon abott one o'c]ock I received a call, among many, from Cumberland County in which they in-formed me that the sheriff, who coincidentally is my police I
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coordinator on my staff, and I were due at three o' clock in
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Cumberland County Courthouse.
When we arrived, Commissioner Myers spoke to the large group.
He outlined everything.
Ve were to go back to Franklin County and do the same thing.
I immediately called in every police department representative and up until two o' clock I had spoken to all of them.
We were prepared for the mass exodus on the highways in order to facilitate the moving of these vehicles to school locations.
I informed them that if the evacuation came off be-fore I spoke to everybody at ten o' clock on Sunday morning, either the following morning or, as I say, two o' clock that morning.
On Sunday morning I was meeting with the Commissioners lh and all the Township Supervisors and all other officials, wheth-er it be fire, police, ambulance, rescue, whatever.
And at ten
'o' clock in the morning, Sunday morning, I laid down the ground-work for the complete evacuation of Cumberland County of three areas that we were going to house in Franklin County and out-lined the jobs that each one would have to do in order to suc-ceed in this mission.
Each school district, the personnel, immediately got a hold of their teachers, etc.
What I mean by that is their janitors, their cafeteria personnel, some of them even have nursing personnel.
And each school district and school was ii a
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{v completely set up.
They were briefed, the same as I had briefed everyone.
The fire police were all ready, the radio clubs, which I used continuously, were all ready, we had complete radio contact of every nook and corner of Franklin County.
At that time we were prepared to exodus in Franklin County on three hi hways.
As it turned out on Monday, we found 6
out that if this evacuation had come off it would be by Inter-state 81 only.
Nou when I say that you must bear in mind that some people would still come up Route 11, Route 75, but we were still prepared to handle them if they did.
As they came into Franklin County, they would be taken off by quick count and directed to each school.
As they came down 81, first off would
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be Chambersburg School District and then on down to the very last exit, next to the last exit in Franklin County, to go right and left into the Vaynesboro School District and Tuscarora School District.
We still hadn't reserved the School District of St. Thomas, which is a part of the Tuscarora School District and the Fath Meadow School District off of Route 75, in fact, on Route 75 on the other side of the mountain ~for the overflow if we had more than what was predetermined at 25,000.
All police departments in the county were helping vith the direc-tions and escorting of the school buses of any bus, any vehicle that came that were going to a shelter.
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j lo Sometime Monday night, Monday afternoon, I presume we made an update to all the schools as a precautionary measure j
and we did find out that what was' originally scheduled, and the number of people they could care for, was reduced in some in-stances because of sOptic tanks and well water.
Our preliminary figures were based on school population, school attendance per-sonnel.
And of course, we, by putting these people in, in a housing shelter, would be the~re 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> and the facilities just were not sufficient to handle that type of an overload.
So each building in each case was reduced, but we still had i
plenty of school buildings.
i We did not tap our resources for privately owned i
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church schools.
We still had those in reserve which could house approximately 15,000.
We still had not reserved our fire houses j-in which can house approximately 1,000.
We still had our churchc s in reserve and any number of churches in our county had facili-4 1
l ties for housing people in any kind of an incident.
If things came to worst, Franklin County was pre-pared to handle upwards of 50,000.
Whether the plan would work we do not know.
I know that my superiors say that panic is not a_ problem.. I will not comment whether it would be or not.
t Therefore, I cannot say whether our whole plan would come off without a hitch.
Nobody knows.
All I can say is Franklin County
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<J was prepared to carry out its mission that was assigned to us.
As a parting statement to this Committee, I would like to express my feelings for all the volunteers that parti-cipated.
We hauled into Franklin County numerous people from Middletown at the Frey Village and from the Homeland Nursing Home.
Our ambulances were used.
All our ambulance personnel that performed in this miasion were volunteers.
These men and women, we have both in our fire department, took off from work.
Some of them were excused with pay, others were excused without pay.
There was a lot of sacrificing done for this mission.
I can never thank them for giving up their pay for this.
They feel the sama way as the people, whom I'm a part of, public lh safety, the citizenry of this state is our mission and we will perform the job assigned to us.
As I said, whether it would have been successful, I do not know, but we did have the plans to carry out the mission assigned to us.
CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
Thank you.
BY CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
(To Mr. Gonder)
G We have heard this morning and we have heard it in the past that the information was either lacking or conflicting, confusion to say the least.
And thers were occasions, maybe l
too many occasions, when the media was the prime source of in-t.j
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{v formation rather than official channels.
You indicated that, if I heard you correctly, the first contact that you had with PEMA was at 7:45 on saturday morning?
A Yes, sir.
Q Nothing prior to that, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday?
A No, sir.
Q Did any of the adjacent counties like Dauphin, Lancaster or Cumberland communicate with you prior to that Saturday morning?
A No, sir.
We had teletype messages of the incident but nothing about evacuation or being assigned the purpose, the
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mission, the host county for Cumberland County, nothing on that
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status.
The only thing that was on the teletype was what was going on at Three Mile Island.
Q When was the first time that you learned that you were the host county?
A At 8:00 o' clock on the telephone.
The first call came a quarter of eight.
I was on the phone at eight.
That was when I got my mission assigned to me.
Q How about a month before or two months before or three years before, 1 some master plan, was Franlkin County assigned to be a host county?
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A No, sir.
We knew through planning, that depending on the incident, we could either be a host county or the inci-dent could be in the county.
But as far as being assigned the job that we were assigned, I knew nothing of that until eight o' clock.
That is why I have had preliminary plans.
I have had them since I have been in this position.
But the actual mis-sion being carried out at that time, I knew nothing of it until eight o' clock of the mission assigned to me.
O And you say you have had preliminary plans for some period of time?
A Training.
Q The direction, the instructions for developing those
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plans, were they self-initiated or did that direction come from some higher authority?
A That was in our training, in the different seminars, classes, our schools that we go to.
That is part of our job.
Anything can happen and we would have that mission to perform.
O And this is training instituted by PEMA?
A Yes, sir, region and federal.
Q Then becoming a host county was not a complete shock?
A Ho, sir.
Q The evacuation routes or identification of school 1
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buildings, that type of information was on hand prior to your phone call on Saturday morning?
A Yes, sir.
I had all that information.
As I said, I slipped by having a daily number of the school, not the Satur-day or Sunday number.
I havc that in my reference file now.
It was a slip on my part, one of those things that is why you have these things.
Q In your opinion, the evacuation route and the ability to direct people coming down these main routes into your county, that could have logistically been handled by the police forces that you had in hand?
A With the police force that I had, which is not a ll regular police force, they are fire police and our radio club, radio controlled cars, wa were meeting everybody and escorting them directly to their schools.
O How much lead time do you need to get your fire police out?
A Approximately one-half hour.
It depends on the time of day, the day of the week.
Q Are your volunteer companies and fire police all on the central radio, county radio setup?
A The majority of them have monitors at.ama and in their cars.
If there is anyone at home, and eaca fire company s
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that they are affiliated with knows their work numbers and each fire police organization has-their own officen;and they are contacted first and then he contacts them, and it would take, if they were working, it would take approximately one-half hour till they would be on the scene.
Yle have practice training of disasters and the first half hour you stand there pulling your hair out, but they show up.
They can't be on the spot as quick as someone who is assigned the job full time.
Thay always arrive and they do a very admirable job.
They can be depended on.
They are all well trained and they are there.
They have the public safety at heart.
That is why they are doing the job that they do do, p
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O When PEMA called you on Saturday morning did they G ve you any estimate of heu much time you had befc.0 the i
first evacuees might, the time they gave you notice Jul the first evacuees would hit you?
A Not on that call.
That call was to activate the~Eoc in croparation as Cumberland County would be calling me, which they did.
That is when the estimate came throuZ,
h approximately 25,000 and up.
Q Now I am leading into a question on food.
Ob-viously, you don't have that kind of food sitting on hand in school buildings.
Tell me something about that.
How much lead ID v
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time, where do you get it from?
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We are told that food cannot be put into shelters l
because of the vandalism, because of the theft and because of l
the food deteriorating, spoiling.
At one time in the past i
during the Bay of Pigs episode, the Federal Government did stock fallout shelters, bomb shelters.
There was a life expec-1 tancy on that.
That has all been removed now.
Nowadays we aro told to go to a large supermarket, food warehouse, distribution point and get what we need, we sign slips for it and it will be paid for.
The schools which make an excellent shelter as fall-out shelters, the majority of them, have cafeterias.
They have a three to five day supply of food on hand.
We set up as a the contingency of_/ plan, if it came off, the old Heinz plant, l
which is now tenanted by the Arnold Graphic Corporation, the
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superintendent there gave us peraission to use his complete i
basement, loading and unloading docks, lifts to load and unload.
l That building is located approximately five miles from the Chambersburg Airport.
It has a railroad siding and it is ap-i I
proximately 500 yards from Route 11 and one mile from Inter-state 81.
So the transportation of food to us, which we are always assured will be coming, supplies, everything, we had the facilities to handle it as it came in and the township super-visors and school district pickup trucks, they had, we have i
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other trucks in our resources, would have been distributing the food to the individual schools.
So the coming in and going out was taken care of, sir.
Q You indicated that you have had instructions that you may go to the chain stores, supermarkets, distributors and sign chits for food.
A At the time of emergency, once the emergency is declared.
Q I assume those instructions came from PEMA7 A
At this point, to be truthful, we go to schools conducted by area, by PE4A, and by region.
To actually state at which school, which official gave us that information, I h
wouldn't like to say to be positive.
O Have you ever conversed, had a conversation with a food chain or a supermarket as to whether they would honor a chit in a situation like that?
A Yes, sir.
We have six in Franklin County.
All six would give us what we need when we need it, 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> a day, seven days a week.
CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
Representative O'Brien.
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j BY REPRESENTATIVE 0'BRIEd:
(To Mr. Gonder)
Q Getting back to your telephone call, I think it was
?tilliamson called you to inform you to get ready, was that who O
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you stated, from PEMA?
A At eight o' clock he informed me to activate the emergency operation center, which then all my coordinators would be called in, prepared to handle the mission as a host county.
O Who called you, who was the person called you?
A His title was Deputy Director, Craig Williamson, from Harrisburg PEMA staff.
Q How serious did he tell you it was at that time?
Did he feel or give you the impression that the evacuation would be necessary?
A To be truthful, I cannot say that.
His message to
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me was to be prepared, to activate my EOC, which means when you activate an EOC, your staff, you are prepared when the word comes to, in this case, a move would have been ordered.
G So you're getting prepared.
Did he tell you then when the evacuation was, who was going to order the evacuation, did he give you that?
A No, sir.
He told me I would get my directions mainly from Cumberland County.
We were host for Cumberland County.
Three-fourths of my messages, my requests to perform came from Cumberland County.
I would get everything in that sense, I assume, from Cumberland County.
That is who I was 7q C/
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Q Who did you deal with in Cumberland County?
A Director Coordinator Tom Blosser.
Q Who was he connected with?
A I don't know what went on from him, sir.
Q Who was he connected with?
A I presume he was connected directly with PEMA or with Dauphin County, I presume.
Q What I am trying to find out is the chain of com-mand.
We had the Governor issuing orders, we tried to find out here yesterday, there is plans submitted, they got ev:..cuation plans, everything else, but they don't know who is going to
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make the decision in an emergency in case they will evacuate.
I am trying to find out if you had any instructions who was going to give you the orders?
A In our training, our orders come from higher eche-lons.
Therefore, it could have came from anyone connected with PEMA today.
Q You don't know \\cho it would be?
If the Mayor of Middletown called you,would listen to him?
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No, sir.
Q Why not?
A Because my orders are taken from the County Com-k,)
20 missioners and from higher echelons.
In this case, what was in-volved, being the state, Col. Henderson would issue the orders down through the channels.
Q Don't you t'hink that should be settled because we are under tha impression that the mayor has the right to evacu-ate.
Somebody else says the county commissioner has the right.
What is your opinion?
A In my training, sir, in this particular instance as a host county for Cumberland County, I was to perform the mis-sion as a host county.
Therefore, we would not be evacuating.
Our Commissioners were versed on the job at hand and the order to evacuate was no ching in my mission at all.
My mission was k_)
when that order was given, the order for evacuation would not come to me at all.
My order to be prepared for the exodus of the citizenry of Cumberland County was coming into Franklin.
I would have got that, I assume, from one or two places, either from the state or from Cumberland County.
I do not know, I would not have been affected by the issuance of an order to evacuate because Franklin County was done evacuating.
I am speal:ing of this incident.
O Let's put it this way.
As we are sitting here let's say Three Mile Island is in operation.
Right now we get a call s
that there is a serious problem down there and the mayor is told
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that he had to evacuate and he gives orders to evacuate.
Will that order be followed by you people or does it have to go to higher up?
A You mean if I was in the position in Three Mile Island?
Q If you were making the decision, I think the people would be in danger?
A If the people were in danger in Franklin County, if my Commissioners so directed me to prepare for evacuation, I would carry out that order, sir.
At the same time though I must notify area, who in turn notifies state that the order of evacuation was being carried out.
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Q The main point I'm trying to get is you really don't know who is to issue that final order?
A In this incident, no, sir.
In an incident in my county, yes, sir.
Q I am not talking about your county, I am talking about where the accident happened?
A I would know by teletype that the order was given.
Q By who, by the mayor, chief of police?
A No, sir.
The only ones that have access to our teletype is the PEMA headquarters, area headquarters and each individual emergency operation center.
Therefore, an order like
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22 this would have to come from Col. Henderson.
Q What if the mayor gave it, you wouldn't follow it?
A I assume, I know what the word means, too, sir, that if the mayor of a community in the Three Mile Island peri-meter, whether it be five, ten, or 20, issued the order to evacuate, and in this case my mission was to take care of three distinct communities, if that was one of those communities, I am just assuming that Cumberland County would notify me that dommunity, would be moving into Franklin County.
I can't know any more than that.
CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
Bob Hollis.
BY MR. HOLLIS:
(To Mr. Gonder)
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Q Sir, we have heard comments that you were utilizing schools within the county?
A Yes, sir.
Q Was there ever any plans made to utilize the uni-versity at Shippensburg or Scotland School or any other state facilities within Franklin County in lieu of going to your public schools?
A Shippensburg State College.is not in Franklin County.
O It's right on the border.
A I was f.nformed at the time I requested use of that facility, I was informed by Cumberland County that that was O
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being used in their plans in their county.
As far as Scotland School, yes, sir.
They are on our plan, they have an infirmary.
They were not being loaded on the original 25,000.
The state i
hospital at South Mountain is prepared in very short time of notice to handle 100 to 150 semi-skilled patients or guests.
They can house 400 to 500;if need be, stretching it for just housing purposes, could house more than 400 or 500.
They are on our plan.
I had direct contact with them also.
Mercersburg Academy, the decision was made by the superintendent of schools of Tuscarora County instead of me contacting two people that
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Mercersburg Academy head master would work with Tuscarora School District, they also have an infirmary, they are on the
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plan, they would have been housing people.
Wilson College, a privately owned institution, it depends on what time of the day, night or time of the year particularly whether they have facilities because the students are there, they live there.
i And they do not have big gymnasiums or auditoriums that they can house people.
But they did, in this case, take care of the population of Homeland Nursing Home in Harrisburg, Penn-1 sylvania.
Penn Hall School is standing there.
I requested the use of that from the owners of it, who are Wilson College, and I was informed that there is no plumbing that is workable and the buildings were deteriorating inside through the lack of i
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use and through the lack of maintenance.
But I assure you, sir, on the orders issued -- signed by Governor Shapp, passed by this Legislature that you may com-mandeor any building.
If the need be, we would have comman-deered those three buildings and portable rest room facilities would have been provided.
That is why I say Franklin County, if need be, can house in an emergency 50, 75, 100,000 people by using those types of facilities.
Q A couple of more questions.
One, you say you are by yourself, you have no staff?
A Correct, sir.
Q Since the incident have you requested any staff to g_
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put all these plans that you have worked out now in writing and update?
Have the Commissioners now seen fit, as a result of this incident, to either relieve you of some additional duties that you might have had or given you some help?
A I still request it quite frequently.
I know I am a pest to them.
They must pay for this and the funds from the public, I know, I'm not a kid, the public does not like to see their funds spent on someone who is going to be sitting there doing nothing.
When something happens that is a different story.
Therefore, I do not have additional staff, I don't have a typist that is assigned to me full time.
I have the use of Y
25 F
f4 the switchboard operator in the couthouse to do my typing.
But I have not received an additional increase in staff, no.
C This seems to be the major problem with the emer-gency management system is that the Commissioners or other of-ficials don't seem to want to give what is necessary for plan-ning because, as you have just made a ccament, that planning seems to be a waste of time.
But yet when something happens, they are immediately going to you and saying why isn't this done, why do you have this and why do you have to do that.
Don't you, in your own professional opinion, feel that that is best to have everything laid out ahead of time and have the amount of people that you properly need rather than to try to y
x_j' crash program it?
A Do you want me to answer that perfectly?
I would like to say this, sir.
The so-called bible that ue work under, what is passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate of this stato mandating this, I therefore feel, my personal feeling, that the money should have been appropriated at the name time to facilitate the staffing of personnel that they required, in this book, from state funds.
That is my personal opinion.
MR. ROCK:
Right after the incident at Three Mile Island we instructed Mr. Gonder to write up a plan, the plan
(
26 which he had and that plan is on record.
We done it right then because we wanted it to be fresh in his mind what could take place in the future.
BY MR. HOLLIS:
(To Mr. Gonder)
Q A follow-up to your comment on the arrangements you have made with food service officials, supermarkets, etc.,
within the county to secure food.
The question is on whose order, and I would like a name that you would give, would you purchase or secure food for 50,000 people and who would you tell them to bill it to, just in the event you had to handle it?
A I don't have an answer to that, sir.
All I can say is the state government if the state -- it would be determined by the circumstances.
If the incident that was causing the disaster was in Franklin County, the Franklin County Commis-sioners would be billed.
If it was a state incident, the state would be billed.
That's the way we operate, we are informed to operate that way.
It depends on who declares the disaster.
They are responsible, according to our training according to the bible.
BY REPRESENTATIVE STUBAN:
(To Mr. Conder)
Q Can I comment on that question?
The question he g
('m
27 fJ just asked, you said now that Cumberland County was the people that were telling you that they were going to be.
Now this is the point I think we are going to have to clarify.
A In this case, I was ordered by Deputy Director Craig Williamson to activate the EOC to facilitate handling 25,000 and up.
Therefore, he activated EOC, therefore, I would charge the state in this incident.
If I were ordered by the Franklin County Commissioners to activate the EOC for an inci-dont in Franklin County, they would get the bill.
That is the way I operate and the way I am told to operate, depending on who activates the EOC, where the disaster is, who calls it a disaster, a proclamation.
)
Q Regardless of what you do, you are an employee of the County Commissioners?
A Yes.
Q And you are acting in their behalf?
A Yes, sir.
Q So the bill is going to go directly to them before it goes to anybody else?
A It goes up through channels.
It goes through them and up through channels.
We have one bill that has never been paid.
That was a bill for the Chambersburg Police Department.
According to their contract with the union, in order to put
/8
28 those gentlemen on standby, police oificers, they must be on pay status.
And that bill was presented and the state has not paid it, the county has not paid it.
O In this past incident?
A Yes, sir.
Q So in other words, with the union contract we now have in all the boroughs and municipalities, there is nothing in Civil Defense plans or anything like that that they are volunteers just like the volunteer firemen or anybody else?
A No, sir, they are paid professionals.
Q And they expect to be paid for that extra time they put in as a civic duty?
(_,)
A Yes, sir, that is union.
O I think we better address this system if we are asking a volunteer to leave his job and go out there and we have a man who is employed by a borough or a township, who is a ser-vant of the people just like an elected official, and in a time of emergency that he can't give up his t'.me.
Then we better address this thing.
CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
Are you finished, Bob?
MR. HOLLIS:
Yes.
CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
Representative Brandt.
BY REPRESENTATIVE BRANDT:
(To Mr. Gonder)
/")
QJ
29 v
Q Mr. Gonder, were you talking strictly about being a host county in most of your testimony or were you talking about evacuating Franklin County?
A No, sir.
I understand I am here because of a host county to speak of the plans of the incident.
Q Does Franklin County have an evacuation plan?
A An evacuation plan, yes, sir.
Q In regard to Three Mile Island, an incident at Three Mile Island?
A No, sir.
It would be no difference.
Our plan that we have in general would suffice regardless.
Every plan cannot be concrete because it depends on where the incident is x,
k-)
and what the incident is. You may/ vacuating a city block, you may be evacuating a square mile or a whole county.
Therefore, concrete plans are the same, but the final touches can all be different.
You can be assigned living here, that you will be going to this school, it depends on the incident.
Another incident you may be gting ten mile.
Nothing can be concrete in every incident.
Q But Franklin County does have an evacuation plan?
A Yes, sir.
Q For any type of emergency?
A Yes.
/;NJ
30 b
s/
Q How long has that plan been in place?
A Prior to my arrival on the scene as coordinator and director of emergency management, since I have been in the job since Ilovember,1977.
O Two years or more?
A Yes, sir.
We update them continuously.
Q How long, if you have to evacuate Franklin County, have you looked into if you would have to evacuate Fulton County?
A That is a possibility under the present situation of world affairs.
We are considered a high risk area.
Q If you had to evacuate Franklin County, how much O
\\/
time would it take you to evacuate the county and on top of s
that how many people would you need to implement your plan?
answer it A
I'l}/ in part in reference to parts of your question.
I would have to get a staff in because one man can't talk to but one person at a time on the telephone.
Every department, police and fire, we have to notify because that is the alerting devices of notifying the people.
At the same time, to turn on the radios so that the information of where to go can be given to them, because you wouldn't have time, depending on the inci-dent, to knock on every door to give the information.
The
~
sirens in Franklin County on the early warning system at the w
31 7)
V present time are not to the peak that is desired and we ques-tioned by higher echelon headquarters, therefore, by blowing the sirens everybody in the county would not hear, approximately 40% of them would.
The sirens that are presently in place are owned by the individual fire companies and the neighbors of the fire companies do not want those sirens blown in most cases, it disturbs their sleep, whatever they are doing.
Therefore they are not working.
We have the facilities to set the sirens off though.
And then again, there are not enough sirens in the whole county to alert like it should be.
The other part of your question, which time in-volved in complete evacuation of the county, it would be impos-sible to Completely evacuate Franklin County regardless of time.
Yes, in a certain amount of time you would be able to evacuate the hospitals.
You have to know where to go to, which is not my problem, that is the host county's problem.
Q Excuse me, but you said that you alert 40% of the peopla?
A By siren.
Q How long would it'take you to get 40% of Franklin County out of Franklin County?
!~~
A It depends on where they're going and it depends on
-- we can get them out, 40% of the people we get out in one 1
l 77 s
32 gn N-]
hour.
I feel positive of that -- I am Ocnfident of that.
Q From the time you would get an alert to evacuate from wherever that might come, you would have 40% of Franklin County out of Franklin County' in one hour?
A In one hour.
O How many men would it take to do that, how many personnel would it take to do that?
A They would have to rely on their own personal automobiles.
In one hour it would be impossible to have buses on tha road moving that percentage of people, tle would lose approximately 30% of our people that would never get out of the county.
You have people that the flood waters, and we have the
)
cases documented, can be three feet into their house and they will still not move out.
They will not leave.
That is their sole life possession, their life's work, they won't leave.
You have those kind and there aren't one, two, three or four, you have numerous.
You have people in nursing homes, you have peo-ple in hospitals that comes under what we are taught would have to be sacrificed.
O In other words, you feel 40% of the people in Franklin County can be moved in an hour.
They would be the most l~
mobile people and ones that are best able to move on their own?
l!~
A Right, yes.
[s
./
33 Q
One other question you brought up hert, I would like just a yes or a no on it.
Do you feel you, as the Civil Defense Director, the Emergency Ilanagement Director, have the power to remove someone from their private home?
A We do not have that power, sir.
All we do is recommend.
REPR SE:ITATIVE BRANDT:
Thank you.
CHAIRMIdi WRIGHT:
Marshall Rock.
BY MR. ROCK:
O Just to follow up on Representative Brandt's ques-tion, I think these gentlemen of the Committee should know (5]
about a special situation that you have in Franklin County.
v You are at the top of a strategic target lic'?
A Yes, sir.
Q And so your evacuation plan would call for maybe an evacuation of the entire county.
Would you elaborate as much as you can on that?
A I can, sir.
The alignment on the Franklin County map was raade by some Centleman in Unchington, D.C., who does not know Franklin County.
As I have expressed my opinion on it, that you can live in one part of Franklin County and be safe and people five miles from you, in this case west of you, have to get out.
The alignment that was designated, it is p
.,l
34 (O
completely -- it should be looked into.
There is no reason why you live here, you have friends, neighbors living back here five miles away, they have to go and you're safe and over here is the point of detonation.
In our training we are taught that the largest nuclear bomb known in American knowledge leaves a crater seven miles wide with blast and heat up to ten miles.
Anything over ten miles, if you are in a safe shelter, you can survive.
IIow the fallout is a different question.
It depreciates by a formula of seven and I won't go into that.
But anyuay you may be safe here in, say, an hour you could come out because the fallout had dissipated, went off in the air in the direction r
(_)
of the air current.
You have to be careful of the fallout.com-ing on the air currents from a distance, explosion, uhich, as I say, decreases by a seven percent formula.
That vould be less than uhat it was there.
But on that knowledge we are taught, I feel that the gentleman in 'Jashingtan on his drafting table, not knowing the geographical layout of Franklin County, not having the knowledge of that, I feel that if it was looked into, onsite inspection, that any nuclear bomb on site F.
which is the top --
Q Describe that to the Committee.
I don't think they are aware.
i
35 v
A The s i t e R known as the underground pentagon.
We are told it is number one on the priority of the list of the Russians.
Therefore, in the first wave of bombs one of them would be directed to site R.
The bombs today, contrary to 15 years ago are all computerized controlled.
If they want to hit this target, they are going to hit that target.
Fifteen, 20 years ago if they throu a bomb at this target, your best place i
to go was on that target because it would hit 20 miles away.
I mean, that is the way modern technology is.
CHAIRMAN VRIGHT:
Ve take exception to that.
Go on.
MR. GONDER:
Therefore, a bombing at site R is 25 miles, 20 miles anyway by air to Interstate 81, which dissects
(
N/
Franklin County.
And I feel from what they tell us that every-body west of Interstate 81 would not have to be evacuated.
If so, everybody east of 81 that I would have in the county would be evacuated, could be housed no problem at all, in the western half of the county.
That is the only thing that I -- and I say I can't disagree with him, but I think the man in Washington who does the aligning of the crises area does not take into consideration the mileage, etc.
But I will do what I am told.
l MR. ROCK:
As one of the County Commissioners of Franklin County, we are now building a new courthouse, and of cource, we had plans for a blast-proof center.
Ue were told by I
j%
(.-
.. = _ - _
i 36 ii.
i
'the federal officials that we would get, if we would build this blast-proof center, we would get reimbursed 50%.
So we have had plans for the last three to four years, and we were told by-having our plans the money would be'available when'we built our center.
But when we got ready to build our center there I-was no money available.
So, we are still going to build a center, but it won't be a blast-proof center.
I feel it is l
very important when you plan to build any t3Pe of a center, the more planning you have into it than what you need and i
sources you have to plan your money.
I know in Franklin County L
budgets are important as it is in the federal and state.
But I~still think that like Franklin County is a high risk county, I felt that we should have had a blast-proof center there.
But due to the fact that we didn't get reimbursements we had to take another look at it and build what we feel we could afford in Franklin County.
i CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
Representative Lehr.
4 F
BY~REPRISENTATIVE L2HR:
(To Mr. Gonder) i Q
Mr. Gonder, you had one page testimony here, at the
!~
bottom of that page, it says " Depending on volunteers is not l
l the way to handle life and death situations in the planning field."
j My question is do you have a trained staff large L
0
37 f,~\\
.j enough to handle an emergency, without volunteers, such as TMI?
A I thought I had on here situations in the manage-ment field.
In other words, I am not talking about the people, thank God we have them, in the fire department, police depart-ment, that are doing the actual work.
I wasn't speaking to them.
I was speaking of in an EOC in which everything has to be done in the shortest possible time to alert everybody.
I feel that if this is necessary, which it is, don't get me wrong, I am dedicated to public safety, I feel that the staff to suf-fice for Franklin County should be about three or four people, not one.
That is what I meant by that statement in the manage-ment field.
I should not have to rely upon my friends to come p) in and help me.
That is what we depended on and thank God we
(_
did the job.
That is what I meant by that management field.
MR. ROCK:
I might say at the present time we are building the new center, I am sure we are going to have new equipment and we are going to have trained people for that con-ter.
At the present time where we are located, we are cramped, we had to just get temporary quarters in the bank building which is close to our courthouse.
Let me tell you one thing.
In Franklin County we operate Franklin County like a business.
We have a budget, we live with that budget.
This is the only way we can hold the mill rate.
I feel, as the County Commissioner,
/
?
v
38 LO the main thing in incidents like this is to know the truth.
It is not only as a Commissioner, but as you go down the. chain of command, the school directors, the supervisors, the mayors.
If
-they definitely know the truth of what is happening, you will get the response, they will respond to the incident.
But when you get confusion and there is doubt in peoples' minds what the situation is, you will never get the cooperation from any j
local government like you should get.
[
Now, I feel it is to get the news media, the infor-mation they are getting of what the incident really is and tell the people exactly what is going on.
I feel it is probably one of the main targets to deal with in the future.
I CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
Representative Klingaman.
REPRESENTATIVE KLINGAMAN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I BY REPRESENTATIVE KLINGAMAN:
(To Mr. Gonder)
Q Mr. Gonder, we spoke about, you apparently had an adequate plan as a host and then you say you have a plan for evacuation.
Does PEMA require each county, to your knowledge, to have two plans, one for host, one for evacuation?
Are you aware, do you know if they do?
Who says you have to have a plan?
Does PEMA say that?
A That is part of my job.
i Q
Of training?
. ()
n.
e w
,e
,-n.,
e.
l 39 O
A Yes, sir.
Q But who dictates, you at.the top of the pile some-place, says that Franklin County must have an evacuation plan?
Does anybody say that?
A From my very first school I was informed of that and I knew plans were there prior to my being on the job.
It is part of the plan the whole way.from the top down, sir, even down to the local government including townships and boroughs or cities, must have these plans.
O It seems to me through these hearings it is rather loosely knit.
Is there any penalty, for example, if you don't have a plan?
Is there any authority that comes in and says,
()
look, Franklin County you don't have an evacuation plan and therefore you are going to be penalized to this extent?
A Yes, sir.
In our, what we call the bible, in our book, every jurisdiction in the. State of Pennsylvania is man-dated to have a director-coordinator of emergency management.
4 And he is trained in what is necessary and it states in the book what is necessary.
Q We are required to have that individual --
A We are now.
Q Is-that individual required by any statute or by any regulation to draw up a plan or are you aware?
g.
v d'
4 y
c -----
m--- - --.r s-.3
--e w 7
40 A
By law from you gentlemen it is mandated that each jurisdiction must be able -- will have an emergency operation center and by training and plans of the state and federal gov-ernment the operation of that emergency center is having plans.
That is the way it --
0 I am trying to get an organizational setup that somebody says, some authority somewhere has to come in and say each of you counties, you must have an evacuation plan and you must have a host plan.
I am from Schulykill and during the course of this emergency our pastors were running around look-ing for somebody to take the pews out of the church.
I know this was not coordinated by anybody, it was sort of a volunteer
\\ _)
effort.
I would like to see this thing dnni that we enuld say this man, this authority in the state is the man who says you must have a plan and I think we ought to have a law that says if you do not have a plan, somebody else is going to make e plan for you.
I will get beyond that.
I am not being critical.
A I un -rstand.
Q I am looking at the Commonwealth in general and try-ing to get this thing organized in my mind as to what I might recommend when this Committee meets to drau 'up: its report. Before this incident, did you have much contact with PEMA or is this an orgcnization that was waiting around for something to happen c,
41 so they could draw up a plan once they had experience?
A Of fhand, I would say I had six teletype messages in tro or three days previous to the activation of our EOC and reading the papers, etc., that they were having trouble.
I did know that, sir.
Q You had two or three in the days previous, and maybe two or three in six years previous.
In all the hearings, to the best of my recollection, you were the first to mention the word area.
Does PEMA have areas set up, you said --
A Yes sir.
Q You said the state would notify the area or you would notify the area, the area would notify the state, do they have
,~( )
areas set up?
A Yes, sir.
The State of Pennsylvania and the Pennsyl+
vania Emergency Management Agency is divided into three areas, eastern area, central area, and western area.
Franklin County is one of 24 counties in the central area.
Our area headquartern is at 3elinsgrove, Pennsylvania, and our director is Joe Dougherty.
Q Only three areas for the state in an emergency such as we had at Three Mile Is1 cud dividing 400 miles of Pennsylvanic by three doesn't seem to me, at least, to be specific.
- Well, that is something I think the Committee will get into later.
42 (O
A In fact, if you do not know it, the central area did not function during this incident.
I think the central area was, the gentlemen in the central arco, were dispersed into counties surrounding Three Mile Island to lend their supe port and knowledge and direction came directly from PEMA to the individual counties, not through central.
One step in the chain was omitted, we got orders directly from PEMA.
- Normally, they come to area.
C As we <iere talking about staff here and the lack of staff, a thought occur.
to me.
Aboard a naval vessel, every member of the crew has a job to do.
He is a yeoman, storekeeper or a mailman or electrician, but he also has a battle station.
s /
I wonder, do you think could,perhaps,the prothonotary and the register of wills and the recorder of deeds, in the interest of public service, be given some sort of function in your organi-zation that would not be a burden on the taxpayer; he is being paid anyway.
So that people in the courthouse, for example, and I asswae your office is in the courthouse, that they would have, so to speak, a battle station in case of an emergency such as this.
Do you think that would work and increase your staff?
I know ue can get down to a point, and I am as concerned as Representative Stuban, where union contracts enter into this.
'then my life is in danger, I am going to skip the union contract 7
I i
03 i
LTO Do you think you might be able to improve staff?
Because I am concerned, because everyone we have heard from in the emergency management has talked about lack of staff.
f MR. RCCK:
Well, I am sure in our county, the County Commissioners, we want every department head to look at services.
We feel our department heads are dedicated to ser-fice and that is what we want in Franklin County, but at the l*
same time somebody has got to pay the bill.
That is our job to i
i, levy the mill rate and I am sure a lot of our department heads would like to have more staff, but you cannot pay staff for i-something, four or five staff, for something that might happen I
that might never happen.
Here I feel you have to have plans in case something happens.
Then you need the paid staff and that is what we have done in Franklin County, We told th'. Gonder when this incident happened to get the staff at that time be-cause of the serious situation.
But we do not want to pay l.
staff the year round if incidents don't happen.
Y"u have to l
run county government like a business.
BY REPRESENTATIVE KLINGAMAN:
(To Mr. Rock) l l
0 That is understandable.
The thought was going through my mind was something like, for example, Mr. Gonder would assign to the register of wills and say, look, Joe, when the. red alert comes up it is your job to notify all the police 1O
+
44 O
departments, and Mary, you are to notify all the nurses, and have a sort of an organization set up like that within the county and it would be available in case of an emergency, would it not?
A I feel this probably would be a good idea.
Some-thing I hadn't really thought about, but I feel, as public l
officials --
Q Thanks a lot.
That's the first credit I got for a good idea in seven years.
We are-talking about the cost of staff.
The other observation I had is we had several people here during-the course of the hearing saying tax the utilities to cover the cost, which in my estimation, is only an exercise in futility in the first place because it filters down to the guy who turns on the light switch.
And if you tax the utility, it is Going to be eventually the consumer who pays anyway.
So I can understand whether the government pays for it or the utilities, eventually it is the same guy who pays the light bill and pays the taxes, he's going to pay the bill anyway.
Am I safe in the observation that all these plans that we talked about are great and workable in the event of, let's say, a slowly evolving amergency where you have maybe one or two days to get ready.
If we have something such as an explosion or an earthquake or a dam bursting, you just don't have time to put
(
l
. ~
e 45 O
these plans into effect and about the only thing you'can do is pray.
Is that a good observation?
j MR. GONDER:
It depends on what the situation is, sir.
If it is a transport incident as to materials, it depends on the location of the fire department; we have contactedJ.
Amtrak, we also have our own slide scales on some hazardous materials.
So it depends on what it is and just how far the evacuation would be in effect and we take care of it that way, sir.
We know it has to be done.
Q I can understand that.
I live in an area that is hilly and there are many dams in the area.
But if somebody calls up the fire department and says Tuscarora dam broke, you have maybe 15 minutes to get up on the hill, and so our plans here that we are speaking-about, perhaps in this Committee are workable if we have, as I said, a slowly evolving emergency.
We talk here of enemy action, for exa.nple, when we have got, what, in this day.and age, we don't have a heck of a lot of lead time.
A No, we don't, sir.
Now, on dams, I don't know if yot are aware of it or not, but we have to coordinate, a person in my position, has to coordinate with all owners of every dam in the county.
We get those samc big reports that those dam owners i
have to turn into the Corps of Engineers, ever:cody.
We get i
z
.--.,--.m_:-,
46 h
i that and we must coordinate with them an alerting device it.at will facilitate alerting everybody down from the dam.
But what is
.said has to be done and what these owners of these dams are do-ing, that is a different story.
Q Well, I will sleep as well as I can.
A It's on paper, I'll say that.
Q I will sleep as well as I can knowing that emergency i
management and my National Guard are awake.
Thank you.
A' They are, sir.
l-CHAIRMAN VRIGHT:
Representative Dorr.
BY REPRESENTATIVE DORR:
(To Mr. Gonder)
(~}
Q Ibr. Gonder, you indicated you were the host for j
three, I believe, communities in Cumberland County?
A Yes..
O Did you indicate what communities those were?
A Not offhand, but I have it sir.
So much went over 1
I the dam since then, I can't remember the names of them.
I don't even have it with me.
I can't think of the names off hand, sir, but there was three.
O It was a matter of curiosity anyway.
I am wonder-1 l
ing as an adjunct to that whether you were aware of the further evacuation plans of Cumberland County or were you just con-
-cerned with what was coming to you?
In other words, for example,
- O e
~47 h
I between where I live and where you live is Adams County.
To my knowledge, york county was not using any of Adams County as a host county.
Are you aware of.whether or not Adams Countrwas to-act as a host for anyone?
A No,. sir, I am not.
I do know that the representa-tives of those three communities did come to my office, Cumber-l land County officials did come to my office.
I met them, it was either the Emergency Management' Agency director or the mayor or the town council, something.
All three communities were in my office checking out that I was able to take care of l
their communities.
Q One further point, are you aware of whether or not
([
the telephone companies are prepared to or have any facilities to act as an assist to you in notifying persons for emergency i
situations?-
i A
There is a multi-million dollar setup in which given i
areas, like a city or a county, is divided by zones and by using pre-recorded tapes, inserting it in this instrument.
Every tele-phone in that designated by push button area that you want will p
ring and that recorded voice will be on there telling them where to go, what to do and everything.
That is the device that has been designed and in use in some communities, and I say some, it is so expensive but it is a beautiful piece of equip-O
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48 gm L]
ment.
Q Does your knowledge of that come from the fact some, either emergency management training personnel or some advertiser or a vendor of such a system indicates to you that it is available if you want to buy it?
Is that a sell type of thing?
A No, the knowledge of that came from my participa-tion on the committee to investigate the feasibility of a plan for 911 in Franklin County.
That is how I became aware of that device.
Q To your knowledge you couldn't call the telephone office in Chambersburg and, say, would you ring up every tele-(
i phone in Chambersburg and tell them they have to get out of town?
A That can.not be done by United.
REPRESENTATIVZ DORR:
That is all, CHAIRMAN URIGHT:
Marshall Rock.
y BY MR. ROCK:
(To Mr. Gonder)
Q Mr. Gonder, you talk about Route 81, moving every-one south on 81 fram Cumberland County'into Franklin County?
A Yes, sir.
O How many lanes were you using?
A We were using three lanes going south.
The other
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49 1
lane going north would be like a two lane road.
The other lane going north would be used only by emergency vehicles.
Q Did you have State Police control of 81 then?
A The State Police were assigned to that.
I was in-formed one was assigned to my staff.
Q Did you have any National Guard help?
A Hegative, sir.
The National Guard cannot perform in any emergency unless so ordered by the Governor of Pennsylvania and the Governor of Pennsylvania did not declare an emergency.
C In your plan, do you have radiation monitoring teams?
A I have radiation monitoring devices.
I do not have
,s teams.
I have been unsuccessful to entice anyone that would assume the knowledge, such as science teachers in the school district anywhere, to undertake the job as my coordinator of radiology.
Therefore, I have no radiological protection per-sonnel in the county of Franklin.
O Part of your duty is also to go out on hazardous waste problems.
You just had one the other week, is that part of your job, you alone?
A The state says that any hazardous material incident, any hazardous material spill that I will be on the scene and make my reports to the higher echelons.
In Franklin County,
r 5G i
that is not done because in Franklin County our fire chiefs are God Almighty; they have their territory, they take care of their territories, they do not need the office that I am in.
I was lucky to be on the scene at the railroad derailment, we had an incident in Uayne Heights the other night, the man from DER was called.
His first sentence was, he called me by name, has Jerry Gonder been alerted?
My dispatcher said yes.
He said, is he on the scene?
He said, no, sir.
He didn't go into detail.
But in Franklin County our fire chiefs are God Almighty and they have nothing to do with my office.
And my higher echelon, I understand, is looking into that possibility of informing our Commissioners that the fire chiefs will cooperate with every-thing that is state mandated regardless of their past supremacy.
But it has not been done as yet.
MR. ROCK:
I would like to say about our fire de-partments in Franklin County, we have 17 fire companies and, of course, I feel we have the greatest volunteer fire companies in Franklin County because they are fighting for territories.
And when you have fire companies fighting for territories, you have a terrific big organi zation and I feel that is a great wealth to Franklin County.
CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
Gentlemen, I think we have come to the end of the questions.
If you feel at any point that you are
51 on the defensive, I apologize for that.
We were basically try-ing to pick your brains and learn your experiences and we do not wish to leave the impression that we were being critical.
I think we were impressed with the knowledge that you have im-parted to us.
And the only thing I will ask at this point is, if you have any further ideas, any recommendations or any com-ments that you may have forgotten, when you get back home if you can jot them down on a piece of paper and send them to us, we vill appreciate it.
We thank you very much for being with us.
You have a final comment?
MR. GONDER:
I would like to say one thing, if I may sir.
If your Committee is successful in its mission, and I
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am not condemning the press, we can't live without them, even in the time of emergency we have to have them, but if 'he of-fices like I am responsible for knew what was going on before the press had a hold of it, to keep from getting, I mean, I had hundreds of telephone calls from the public asking us and we did not know the knowledge of what they were asking, because we hadn't gotten it officially.
CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
We have gotten that same comment from your colleagues in adjacent counties.
One important piece of information before we take a break, Representative Ivan Itkin's wife had a baby boy this
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x morning.
(Applause.)
CHAIRMAN URIGHT:
Let's take a ten minute break before we bring on General Scott.
(Brief recess.)
MAJOR GENERAL RICHARD M. SCOTT, called as a witness, being duly sworn, testified as follows:
CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
Ve have Major General Richard M.
Scott, the Adjutant General of the State of Pennsylvania, who r~x I believe has a statement to make and then he will entertain L.)
questions.
You are on, General.
MAJ. GEN. SCOTT:
Representative Wright and Members of the Committee:
I am General Scott, the Adjutant General of Penn-sylvania of record.
I do have a short prepared statement which refers to an after action report, which we published and which was distributed some weeks ago to each of you.
But I had Col.
McCrone (phonetic) place a copy of my statement and this booklet at your places.
The Pennsylvania National Guard has a dual mission.
First, our Federal Mission is to provide trained rm l
53 j
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/
units and qualified individuals available for mobilization in the event of National Emergency to support the war plans of the Department of Defense.
The second mission is to be responsive to authori-ties of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania with units trained and equipped to function effectively in the event of natural disas-ter or civil emergency.
In order to fulfill this second mission the Pennsyl-vania National Guard has developed an Emergency Operational Plan.
The latest revision of this plan is dated 22 June 1978 and contains an Annex which specifically addresses accidents at fixed nuclear facilities such as Three Mile Island.
(, l k-Thus, the Pennsylvania National Guard had a plan in being to deal with this type emergency when we were first noti-fled at 7:45 AM on Wednesday, March 28th that an accident had occurred at Three Mile Island.
At this time the Pennsylvania National Guard was asked to develop lists of available Guard transportation in the event it would be needed to assist in evacuation of personnel living in the vicinity of the plant.
Such planning began immediately and continued until approximately 11:00 /J1 that same date when we were notified that the problem at Three Mile Island was under control and that
~
National Guard assistance would not be required.
l l
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54 fv At 9: 20 An on Friday, 30 March 1979, however, this Headquarters was notified by the Pennsylvania Emergency Manage-meat Agency that the situation at Three Mile Island had become more serious and that National Guard assistance might be re-quired.
Planning continued immediately and the Emergency Opera-tion Center at my headquarters was opened at 9:35 AM.
Immediate response units were alerted and selected personnel were acti-vated to assist in planning at county and state level.
I di-rected my staff to prepare plans to employ National Guard per-sonnel in the area of operations to assist civil authorities in:
(1) evacuation of personnel, (2) traffic control, (3) seal-ing off evacuated areas and (4) providing local security should (mJ evacuation become necessary.
Actual Pennsylvania National Guard participation in the Three Mile Island incident primarily involved planning for National Guard assistance in the event of evacuation of the area.
This planning was accomplished both at my headquarters and at county level where National Guard officers assisted local Emergency Management directors with their planning.
Although a total of only 250 State Active Duty mandays were expended, the entire Pennsylvania National Guard was available to be deployed if it had been necessary.
~
The Pennsylvania National Guard has published an
,/ \\
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55
(?v after-action report covering the accident at Three Mile Island.
This report is a cc'prehensive document covering all aspects of Pennsylvania National Guard involvement in the emergency.
Copies were distributed to each member of the Pennsylvania Sen-ate and House approximately four weeks ago.
I have additional copies distributed for those of you who may not have copies with you today.
I am sure that had the Pennsylvania National Guard been mobilized as a result of the accident at Threc Mile Island it would have acquitted itself well, however, problems surfaced during this incident which, when solved, will make us evea bet-ter prepared to face a similar emergency in the future.
Gentle-t 3
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men, in this connection, I refer you to page 12 of our after acticn report.
Here you will find discussed the principal problems we encountered.
As you will note, these problems cover a broad spectrum ranging from coping with unusual and perhaps unique planning factors to the fact that some military devices are not scaled to measure radioactivity in the millirem cange.
tie have confined our recommendations, which appear on page 14 and 15, to areas which are within our cognizance to implement.
The Pennsylvania National Guard has already begun solving the problems which were identified during the Three Mile Island incident and the lessons learned as a result of our tm
(
56 le limited participation in this emergency will be extremely valuable to us in our future operations.
Thank God the emergency ended without the necessity for an evacuation and without a requirement for mobilization and deployment of the Pennsylvania National Guard.
As a result of the planning we accomplished during this event and the lessons we learned, the Pennsylvania National Guard will be bettcr pre-pared to cope with such an accident should one occur within the Commonwealth in the future.
Mr. Chairman, that completes my prepared statement 4
and I am prepared to answer any questions you may have.
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}
BY CHAIRIUd; WRIGHT:
O Can you give us a little more detail in regards to what kind of personnel and what kind of functions you expended, went through, completed during those 250 mandays, things like helicopters, plans?
A Yes, sir.
We brought on active duty, basically, the commanders of the units which would have participated.
We designated the 28th Division Artillery at Harrisburg to be our task force command post.
Ve also activated our emerc;ncy oper-ation center located at Fort Indiantown Gap and also sent down to PEMA our response teams.
Each of those headquarters was manned 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> a day.
Those people who were brought in did
f 57 prepare plans.
Essentially, the planning that we did was primarily connected with the items that I have spoken to in my opening remarks.
Let's first take evacuation.
The concept that we used was to alert units in the periphery of the expected area of that which would be evacuated.
In other words, we wanted the units to come into that area to take control, put a peri-meter defense and do whatever else was possible under the condi-tions of radioactivity which might have existed at that time.
That total force, including those for that mission, which was a preponderant mission, was nuibered at some 5800 people.
The other missions we had, such as helping with the g',
evacuation routes, the Guard is equipped with much specialized equipment, which could remove vehicles that are out of commis-sion on the road, remove them from the roadway.
We have fuel trailers, which we were prepared to move out to those cars which, perhaps, ran out of gasoline.
In total, we were able to have assisted in evacuation not only on the ground but in the air.
He have, for example, 16 CH47 Schanook (phonetic) heli-copters as part of our aviation.
Each of them is capable of carrying 30, 35 individual evacuees or putting in an emergency basic litters in the hulls of the machine.
Ue have other heli-copters and other fi':ed wing ui. craft in both the air and armed
E 58
- s a
sL; guard which would have helped in route control, reconnaissance, etc., and give a good leg up on everything we might have been involved with.
I would say that we coordinated with the State Police.
The State Police would be primary in drauing evacuation routes.
Ve.would use our access to assist them in any way that was de-sired as we were capable of doing.
As a matter of fact, many meetings took place between the State Police and other elements of this state, Health Department or, obviously, PEMA which were represented and DER.
That is in essence our concept of operation.
O Assuming that we had an emergency in an area that is
\\_)
radioactive, but you still have to send personnel into areas to help in an evacuation and control communications and transport and things of that nature, are your people equipped with pro-tective devices, clothing, etc.?
A Not to the extent that ue would have liked or that we do like, naturally.
I think in a situation like this, which was unforeseen by just about overybody in the world, much less in the country, where the area of exposure was nagnified many times over than was, perhaps, would be a rational assessment, that ue would have had to have protective clothing for a number of people, at least the people trot we had alerted.
He don't
()
Q'
59 (9
have that.
We had made plans, we had soldiers improvising at Fort Indiantown Gap wearing two pairs of trousers, for c;tanple, covering all of their body, wearing gloves, ponchos over that, the normal gas mask with the right kind of respirator in it, covering all of their body, knowing all of the normal effects.
And we would have made due with that.
I think that was the case, in this particular incident, where you would have had to show initiative and do things.
I think our Guardsmen did pre-cisely that.
Ve could have handled the thing.
But, no, to have protective clothing which comes, one estimate we get from radiation experts in the nuclear power business, is about 30 bucks a set which includes things like surgeons hats and covers N -'
for your shoes, a second change of clothing as you would come out of the contaminated area.
No, we don't have those, but we would have made due with what we had.
Q Is it correct to assume that the United States Army has units which have sufficient protective clothing and devices, and if that be true, how come the Feds have not passed some of that down to the National Guard?
A Yes, sir, I am sure that they have units which are in the business of decontamination and do have protective clothing.
How many units, I do not know.
In our Guard forces where ve have decontamination teams, that would be, you know, a
60 s._/
one person out of a couple of hundred or such percentage like that.
That is about the best answer I can give you on that, sir O
You talked about 5,000 naticnal Guardsmen being available.
How much lead time would you have had to have and I suppose --
A What we did essentially was to call the state active duty, the commanders of the units.
That is a broad statement, but that is essentially the people who were there at that time ready to react.
But in the process we alerted the units, those commanders and staff that were brought on, alerted their units.
We felt as though we could have gotten 50% of those people on board within two hours, and, roughly 85% within
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four hours.
That would have been moving them into the armory.
But you've got to realize, sir, that these people have normal civilian jobs and if we wanted to decrease that time, we would have had to call them to state active duty.
I think as events turned out, I think the right decision was made at that time.
CHAIIIAH UnIGHT:
Any questions?
Representative McKelvey, you are a National Guardsman, do you have any aues-tions you want to ask him?
BY REPESZHTATIVE McIGLVEY:
Q I would just like to add to the gentleman's remarks about the Guard being away, we were in session at the time the p.
61
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V Three IHle Island incident occurred and as a local commander under Task Force 56, I took the liberty of making sure that my people were aware there was a possibility of us being alerted and we could have been in the armory within an hour, hour and a half.
I know a lot of other commanders do that.
We were able to move, we were ready to move our people whenever General Scott gave the word.
The only question I would like to ask of the General, there was a question yesterday about funding.
It has been my experience in the past when I was activated for state active duty funding was always a problem, would it have been a problem in regard to activating the National Guard?
. \\_ '
A No, we have discussed it in this report.
You will see a letter which the Go'ernor signed which he said he was v
calling to state active duty people that I deemed were necessary to do their job.
The way it normally works out, if you have a flood or something, our people like to volunteer and get over there, and at that point in time, as you well know from your remarks, Representative McKelvey, that is on a volunteer basis.
Hobody is authorized any money.
If they have to stay out there for a while, we try to get them some help, first of all, for example pay for their expenses.
And then if we feel they are there for
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O a while, several days or more, why, we go back through the system here and try to get money.
In this particular case, ae spent only 250 mandays of people, some $16,900, that is within a few cents of the actual number.
And since we had at the end-of our fiscal year money which would have lapsed, we sort of f'
took that out of that money.
We did not have to get any addi-tional appropriation.
But, yes, we did pay them.
Q One more-question.
Mr. Donatella from Beaver County i
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was here~ yesterday.
He was talking about their evacuation plan for Beaver' County.
From what I understand, it is an excellent plan, but for reasons he didn't explain yesterday the Uational Guard was not involved in their planning for possibile evacua-tion.
I knou in the Philadelphia area Tcsk Force 56, they do i
coordinate with ';tvil Defense personnel.
A I don't know what initiatives, I didn't hear his comments, for the secc.l time it has been asked of me here this j
morning or stated.
But within the county that we could deter-i mine would be directly affected in way of evacuation, we took the initiative to put two Guardsmen of high quality, people who were knowledgeable in this area, into each of those Civil Defense centers.
That gave them'on a 12 hour1.388889e-4 days <br />0.00333 hours <br />1.984127e-5 weeks <br />4.566e-6 months <br /> shift 24 hour2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> capability and I visited at least two or three of the Civil i_
l-Defense Emer5ency Management Centers in the counties and they 1
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63
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were, in fact, on duty and aiding in the planning.
We have, as a matter of policy, your comment, happy and willing to coordi-management nate with any local emergencyfagency on the use of the Guards and we would be happy to do so in this case if it has not been done.
Apparently it hasn't, but I think the-thing that has to be remembered is the way Pennsylvania is organized for an emer-gency is that we have a Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency.
And as I indicated to you, I, like the other depart-ments, sent response teams to that facility which is right here 1
Harrisburg and initiated our own emergency operation center and our own, in our case, task force.
And that is the normal 1
chain for emergency management.
Any place along that line-
_ ()
where we, as a coordinating agency, are required to do whatever it is that people think is appropriate wecwoul-d do, if we had not thought of it ourselves, we like to think we thought of it ourselves.
CHAIRIWI WRIGHT:
Bob Hollis, and I will caution you before he takes over, he used to be a Sgt. Major for one of your predecessors.
MAJ. GEN. SCOTT:
I know he was.
1 BY MR. HOLLIS:
Q General, I was just going to ask you a couple 4
things.
In a followup of what Representative McKelvey was
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64 h
questioning about Beaver County is that the planning that was done by the Guard and the liaison officers on TMI that were sent in, this report dealt with just the Three Mile Island facility.
What Beaver County was talking about is they have three plants in operation out there right now with Shipping P: ort out on the Ohio River and they have a third one under construction and they are in the process of redoing their plan to make it a ten mile evacuation plan.
What he was stating is that in the event that they had to evacuate a ten mile or they had to implement that plan, that they would require the National Guard to provide security and assist them in their evacuation move-ment and that was his base.
And the question I would state is
(,
\\_.y we have facilities under construction now at Berwick, the other one in Pottstown.
Is the Guard or has the Guard developed any contingency plans or support of evacuations from Beaver Valley, Berwick or Limerick in Pottstown for a ten mile plan?
A Yes, sir.
That is what I refer to here, this plan here, we do have an annex on this for hazardous incidents and nuclear incidents and we are prepared to do just that.
I think if you have an opportunity to go through this report, you will see the kind of things that we feel as though we should have.
We should have the capability of equipment and clothing as was suggested here a moment ago to which I agree.
We should have
65 maps.
We don't have maps of every place.
lie have one to 24,000 maps scale coming in.
We have about 7575 of those.
So we are prepared in the Guard to react to any of these areas, we hope to be better prepared.
For example, there are five locations, you mentioned several of them there where there are c0mmercial reactors, a building or in existence.
There are a total of 12-areas uithin this state where we could be faced with an incidentm Again, I guess what I've got to say is that I would like to see these individual emergency management a6encies at the local level come up throuch the system where we could coordinate with them. This is not to say that we don't on a direct basis.
I think if we have a better overall plan, a more p!
flexible plan, where we could react to any of these 12 areas.
Q My next question was going to be, I notice that one of your ccaments in your after action report was monitoring equipment, particularly the low level, you need protective type clothing, have you attempted to requisition this equipment through federal channels?
Have you been denied it or do you feel it is going to have to come from the state?
A No, I can't give you any specifics on that.
I should knou the answer to that and I do not.
But I taink, we have sufficient equipment for what was normally to be considered the hazard.
You know, I think that thing has to be taken a look
66 at from a bunch of different directions.
If you read any, as I am sure you are aware of and many others are, any of the radiation hazards manuals, you know, if you get up to something in the order of between 50 to 70 or even more roentgens then that is the first time you are getting into a health hazard area.
Whereas in this case, I think the highest level of dis-charge that I am aware of is, say, 1300 or 3000 millirems; that is only 1.3 rems.
And if people want to know how much radia-tion they are getting in millirems, I guess we have to have equipment.
But I think clso the plan should be rational and should be there to help us to nullify the threat, the actual threat.
g Q
Well, there seems to be an awful lot of conflict about the eff2 cts of low level radiation and even though most people will profess that you are into 70 or 100 before you have a cumulative and all that.
But when you are sending your Guardsmen into an araa, we are talking about the unknoun, and effect of particularly for cumulative / low level and things like that, and this is where even though it may not be a health hazard according to one manual, you have to some way, the same way you don't utilize the Guardsmen from an area because you might not get them, you bring them in from outside.
It becomes a psycho-logical --
u
67 (O
.i I am not disagreeing with you except to say there is two siacs to that question.
Someplace in there there needs to be probably more accurate equipment that is measurable down in the lower levels.
But I don't think we want to have every-body going around with a geiger counter.
I hope I said, if I didn't, I want to be real sure that I do say it, that the big-gest concern that I had was if directed to go in and seal off an evacuation area, I wanted to know what that hazard was before I did that.
And I didn't think that was forthcoming from the system.
I think that was the biggest problem I would face would have been, my staff would have faced would have been, you know, what is it that we are moving into?
That has to come from the Fi real technical professionals.
They have to be able to say long ahead of time before the emergency what it is we are facing.
Ue would like to hcve that precise in an emergency; you never have it.
I think you have to have it a heck of a lot better than it was disseminated to the state at this time.
BY CHAIIEUdi WRIGHT:
Q Bob asked questions regarding Beaver Valley, Limerick and Berwick.
Across the Delaware River in the State of New Jersey, immediately adjacent to the City of Philadelphia, there is Salem.
I think one in operatien and at least one or
63 x_/
two under construction.
If at accident happened there, they would have the potential effect upon southeastern Pennsylvania.
Is there any conversations, any joint plans between the Penn-sylvania Guard and the New Jersey Guard if an accident happened in an area there?
A Specificrily for New Jersey, I cannot say that we have precise specific plans.
But what did occur throughout this whole incident of Three Mile Island was that we had adju-tant generals frca other states and their assistance and staff visiting with us here.
And we were, I know, through PHIA, that people down in Ilaryland, the state government there, was aware of where we stood in our activities here in Penncylvania and p!
(_
central Pennsylvania.
In addition to that, this report has been sent to all of the states, all the adjutant; general and we hope to form, this is sort of like a little treasure full of information that nobody has experienced, and several adju-tant 3 general have asked me for copies of reports and, of course, we have sent it.
And I think that for a regional hind of thing there must be come coordination there with our neigh-boring states, whether it be New York, Chio, Maryland, West Virginia.
Q We agree that there should be coordination, but apparently it is not in place now.
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A No, sir, not in a written plan, to my knowledge, that is not true.
But --
Q Who should initiate that coordination?
A Vell, again --
Q The director out of Washington?
A I think individual states, individual counties, individual cities should take the initiatives in these things to suit their own purposes.
In our case here, I would think tir.rt our emergency management agency at the state level may ucl1 have done this and I am just not aware of it, initiate the co-ordination action with the adjacent states.
I don't know that.
CHAIRI!AN WRIGHT:
Representative Stuban.
(~'s
\\_.)
BY REPR23EITATIVE STUBAN:
Q Along the same vein there that Jim is on, you have recommendationc here you have made and there are going to be some plants that are going to be licensed and everything else.
Vould it be beyond, you know, you, as the General of the Hational Guard, to communicate with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and express your opinion as to what should be in emergency plans and everything else before the licensing of the plant?
A Well, yeah, I suppose we could do that.
We are not the e::perts in that field and it would be presumptuous of me to L/
70 p-
't_
say that we were.
But we have, for example, with the President' a Commission we had a visit from one of their staff members and went over our recommendations for our role in detail.
We are attempting to do that wherever we can, whether it is up the ladder to the federal level, parallel-wise or with our local governments.
Q Well are you going out of your way now or making it a priority of yours to alert Guards in those areas where these plans are and try to formulate training and get then ready?
I mean, to go t3 the Beruick situation, the Berwick armory will be within that five mile area.
A Those people are trained to react to this now, yes.
g(_)
Q But there is no equipment or protective clothing or anything like that?
A Well not that as specifically designed.
You knou, Pennsylvania, the Federal Government spends about 090,000,000 a year on the National Guard of Pennsylvania.
The State of Penn-cylvania spends about 7,000,000.
Vith that 090,000,000 we buy all sorts of equipment.
Now, I do not know whose role it is to pay for the protective clothing or anything that would be a local thing.
I would think the state would want to examine that as well.
But we could and we were capable of doing, as I in-dicated, making improvised uniforms for our soldiers.
They
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71 gm Lj were all dressed up in two pairs of pants and ponchos, which would have worked.
But it would have been, you know, this time of year putting two pairs of woolen pants and a poncho on would have been pretty uncomfortable.
It is nice to have special clothing.
Q Well the point I am getting at though, when it gets right doun to the nitty-gritty and we get into one of these areas and there is a catastrophe and something happens, it is going to be more logical to keep people there that you can command to stay there than it is going to be to keep people there that are there on a volunteer basis.
So really, we are goin5 to have to go to a military type situation where we can (3
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say who stays.
Because, you know, as a volunteer he is going to run.
There is no way you are going to keep him.
A Well, I don't disagree with that.
I think that, I hate to fall back on the old phrase it depends on the situa-tion, but it really does.
And if it looks like the best thing to do is to activate the Guard from Pennsylvania, then I am sure that the Governor will take that action.
If I think it should be done, I will recommend it to him.
That will put them on state active duty and for something in the order of 15,000 people, that will cost a lot of money.
REPRESENTATIVE STUBAN:
That is all the questions I q
72 have.
CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
Representative Klingaman.
REPRESENTATIVE KLINGAMAN:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
BY REPRESENTATIVE KLINGAIWI:
Q That was the thought that was going through my mind.
First, sir, I think what confuses me most is what in the world was a general doing so close to the action?
A Well, we have a new breed of generals these days.
Q You are to be complimented, sir.
In your case, I may have left it to the colonel or I would have inspected Beaver County or reviewed the troops in Erie.
Leading into the ques-("
tion, let me confess to you that my ethnic background is German and I have a little Prussian militarism in my makeup and I was following Representative Stuban's line, I was thinking here of this thing called marshall law which is a very, very serious step to take in our society.
Watching the television in my home area, 75 miles away, we were thinking about this thing called a meltdown which, in my estimation, I was envisioning this atomic thing getting to the water table in the Susquehanna.
For example, perhaps, contaminating the Susquehanna all the way down to the Chesapeake, perhaps creating contaminated steam that could have gone all over eastern Pennsylvania and it was scary.
Is there a point at which you think, and I believe you
,-m t
1
73 did answer it in part to Representative Stuban, is there a point at which marshall law has to take over and if that is the case --
A It worries me, too, sir.
I asked some legal people some questions about marshall law and the answers that came out were as follows, over-simplified.
But if the disaster is of such a nature that you are suspending civil law, then it would seem to us, to the legal people, that that would mean that the military then, such as in our case, the Guard here, would be-come the law.
That would be able to happen only if the Legis-lature judged that suspension.
The Legislature would nave to vote on that.
lh On the other hand, if the Governor of the State --
Q You mean they would have to call us down here?
(Laughter.)
THE WITNESS:
I don't think anybody can go around suspending civil law except the lawmakers.
BY REPRESENTATIVE KLINGAMAN:
Q Can they sort of do it in advance?
A Now, let me look at the other side of that.
If the Governor, obviously, has the responsibility to maintain law and y
74 6
(v!
order.
Okay, and within that maintenance of law and order he has the right and should issue proclamations and directives, etc.
In that context, he cLn direct implementation.
So it is an executive responsibility in that case.
Either one of those would result in marshall law, military law, versus civilian..
Although in the latter of tae two, we feel, philosophically, conceptually, that the best thing to do is operate through the normal law enforcement agencies, the local police that we are assisting, the State Police or whatever.
Let them make the arrests and we will assist.
I think the mechanisms were there to handle everything except, maybe, going to the most drastic of all situations.
m i
REPRESENTATIVE KLINGAMAN:
I'm impressed that if m
that mrentuality does occur, we are in good hands, General.
THE VITNESS:
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN URIGHT:
Representative Geocey.
REPRESENTATIVE GEESEY:
Mr. Chairman, I would just like to make one comment relative to a statement made by Repre-sentative Stuban about volunteers.
I think, Ted, you have some doubt about the courage of volunteers in saying that they would
. cut _,nd run and you are totally wrong.
All anybody had to operate with in this area was volunteers.
Even when things were the blackest and it appeared that imminent disruption was rm Y
75 bx U
about to occur, the volunteers stood their ground.
There was nobody else to lean on except people in the area who wanted to do whatever it is they could do to save the rest of the people.
There are volunteers in all of the areas affectea that committed feats of heroism that as far as I an concerned would have com-pared favorably to that performed by Cole. and Kelly during World War II.
These people you never read about because it didn't make news.
You'll never hear about then, but their feats were outstanding, their bravery was exemplary, they did not cut and run and it was their full intention to stay on the site doing whatever they could do to help their neighbors until the very last moment.
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(_)
And if that happened here, it would happen in your area, it would happen in any other area wherein the situation totally depended upon volunteers.
My hat is off to them.
Hot enough has been said about them, not enough h s been written about them.
Only they know what they did, but what they did was performed feats of bravery that we may never see.
REPRESENTATIVE STUBAN:
There is no doubt in my mind, Gene, but I think we come to a point where we get down to t h ~a e ultimate time, I, too, happen to think a little bit of my safety and I think yesterday the man from the Old order Amish said ycu leave your animals and then you leave the 1, ed I)
v
76 v
ones, it comes that time.
I could see, you know, in his recom-mendation that they don't use the people locally.
I think we saw it here with Dauphin County people and Harrisburg people saying to your policemen get your family out first.
And it comes to that point.
But really, if anybody should be prepared, I think it should be an organization like the Guard or somebody.
REPRESENTATIVE GEESEY:
No doubt about that.
REPRESENTATIVE STUBAN:
That has the equipment and everything else.
Ue cannot expect to suit up overy volunteer fire coapany in my area or every organization, but we could suit up a regiment of an organization that co uld be there and ready to take over when the volunteers then leave.
/
REPRESENTATIVE GEESEY:
There is no doubt about that, but the volunteers in this area sent their families and stayed behind.
Ue had, perhaps, a dozen in Goldsboro who pro-tected the whole town.
There was nobody else.
They took care of the whole town with additicnal help from the State Police coming in on occasions.
Those volunteers protected that town.
The same is true in every other town and municipality.
They will do a lot more than you think they will and they will stay till the bitter end.
CIIAIRMAN URIGHT:
Do you have a question, Gene?
REPRESENTATIVE GEESEY:
Nope, just wanted to verify
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77 f.m U
that.
CHAIRMAN URIGHT:
Representative Dorr.
BY REPRESIslTATIVE DCRR:
Q General, I am not famfliar with the total capa-bilities of the National Guard in Pennsylvania and I am wonder-ing whether, in your judgment, there would have been any mili-tary type operations that might have been necessary had the worst possible situation arisen, that the Pennsylvania National Guard would not have had the expertise to handle, but perhaps there would have been, there would have been capabilities in, for example, the United States Army Reserves or Air Force f")
Reserves or any other reserve component and whether the National L;
Guard has any continuing contact with those people or whether you had any contact in this inciuent which would have given you the capability to utilize those special capabilities?
A Well, just in general terms, since I have been the Adjutant General of Pennsylvania since February 16, I must say to you that I did not know much about the capability of our Guard forces.
One of the things that I am most impressed with is the professionalism of the Guards, both the Army and the Air Guard.
As a former active duty guy, you know, that is quite an admission on my part.
But I want to say this as sincerely as I can, I think the Guard has souething that a lot of active units don't have in the way of stability.
We have people in e7
~
78 the same units for a number of years and they can do their job and do it darn well.
In some instances, a heck of a lot batter than the active force and I hope not too many active force peo-ple are listening, but it is true.
I think we would, again, have done an exceptionally find job in this case.
Because, you know, in this instance, with the exception of the radioactivity part of it, which I will address here in a minute, it is much like a lot'of other disasters that the Guard has participated in.
If you have a flood and people are evacuated, you do the same thing.
If you want to seal that off, the Guard goes in there and does have and our Guards from Johnstoun and a lot of other places have performed exceptionally outstanding.
In the radioactive area, this is a new thing to just about, a lot of talk earlier about atom bombs and all that sort of thing.
I used to be in that game.
That is not what we were talking about here.
Too many people, I felt, related to it, even last week on the Hiroshima anniversary, with nuclear reactors.
But even in that area, our report says that we needed some additional training in what we call NBC, nuclear biological and chemical education, and we started that.
We acknowledged that to ourselves.
Although we had a respectable capability which could have been brought
, bear in Three Mile Island, ue
79 hJ felt we should have a greater capability than that and so we started a course.
As a matter of fact, this last weekend, we started Saturday and Sunday the first of a total of six days, six eight-hour days of courses to bring up the speed, keep peo-ple in the units where we didn't have the capability that we wanted.
I think the reserve forces, to get to another part of your question, have similar competency to ours and in this particular case, I don't think that we had much direct contact except in the area of coming through for things like ambulances to evacuate the hospitals, etc.
17e not only went to everybody we could think of in the reserve component,:so to speak, but we
\\_,
went to the regular active forae depots and we had a laundry list of all kinds of special equipment that could have been brought in here and tentative plans made to arrange for that.
So, you always look for as much help as you can get from everybody.
Q Did you feel in making those contacts that you had good cooperation from them?
A Yes, without exception.
There were people hore from, well, we contacted our own federal people and also there was a team came in here at the direction of the President I believe and those people were doing much the smae things as our people were doing, and when we got into our cross-planning, why, I
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80 g
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we found that out.
And I met with them here in this building late in the evening and they met with our people, yes, good cooperation.
Q I offer this in a lighthearted sense.
There ar_
people in the room that would disagree with the whole concept, I am sure, but one of the things that occurred to me, especially shortly after the NBC news broadcast on Saturday night that four counties of the area of Three Mile Island were being evacu-ated was that there was a component, a reserve component in York up until a couple of years ago with expertise in the area of field press censorship.
Those kind of capabilities, I don't suppose the National Guard has and I am not advocating we f
i
\\_/
should have done that sort of thing.
A If we did, we wouldn't have used it in that par'~icu-lar operation.
Q We have a tendency, we have heard people from that witness stand saying, going both ways on that issue.
We have the ones that say, we should have had some sort of press cen-sorship and then in the next breath we ought to tell the peo-ple everything.
It is a delicate area.
A From all I can gather, from the whole time, in parts I was involved with, were completely disseminated to the media.
There was no reason to hold anything back.
You know when you n
L
81 are in a situation like this, I guess you can criticize and say, well, I should have heard this from this channel or that channel,
but you use the best thing you can get.
If there is one thing our media are good at is getting the news out quickly, whether it be TV, radio or the papers.
I would be all for using that capability as best you can.
REPRESENTATIVE DORR:
Thank you.
BY CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
O Page 14 of your after action report, pages 14 and 15, you list eight recommendations.
Have any of those recom-mondations been implemented, are any in the process of being implemented?
And if you can't do it on your own initiative, what do you need from us to do so?
A You are under number seven there, sir?
Q Yes.
A Yes, units located within a five mile radius of a nuclear accident not considered as part of the initial force --
yes, we think that would be the wrong thing to do and we can handle that in our own plans.
That a study is needed to determine map requirements for all logical eventualities.
Maps sets should be obtained and distributed in limited quantities for planning purposes with b
t
82 a stock maintained at this headquarters.
We are getting about 50 to 75 copies of each map we need 2nd they are being located in our headquarters.
But this is one where I think you need a broader base than just the Guard or military affairs where everybody that is involved in an emergency should have the capabilities like that.
You might want to suggest that in your report if you agree with me.
That National Guard armories not be considered for use as mass care centers when such use would interfere with the mission -- yes, again, we would try to get that carried out.
And I think, all due respect, unless overruled by the Governor or some higher authority that would be something we could do.
We don't want s
to get the people that are being cared for in the same area
)
where the people are trying to take the corrective actions are located.
Incidentally, I think earlier today that the sugges-tion was made of using schools.
It is an ideal area and I think most counties and cities do contemplate using schools for the evacuees.
Radiation detection equipment such as dosimeters etc., may be obtained through PEMA in sufficient quantities to provide adequate coverage to committed troops.
Again, there that would be our normal source of sup-j ply and I don't know that we had gotten any solid answer back on
83
'O that yet.
But I do think that if people want to know down to the last millirem how much exposure, and maybe that is exactly the way to react in this world today, then that equipment is needed.
I would hope that you would support our point of view on that.
Sufficient protective clothing and equipment be ob-tained to provide adequate protection -- there is no question about that.
That is a good thing to do.
Now how one goes about paying for that and how much of it we need is open to further study.
Feasibility of preparing DD Form 1141, record of occupational exposure -- yeah, again, our plans would be nor-mally for a combat situation where troop units were subjected to i
various levels of radiation and fallout, normally fallout radia-tion.
And there you have to keep a record for their total or their lifetime dosage, etc.
And we are doing that, we do have those forms, some on hand and others on requisition.
In order to s ;plement ove'r crowded commercial com-munication facilities, military communications nets be placed in service immediately -- I think again that could be on our initiative, but se would have to talk about, again, the cost of that operation, because we would have to bring more people onto state active duty.
But we did notice, if you read through this
84
'O thing, we had a jamming of communications.
Everybody was on the phone asking what was happening.
The other guy didn't know either, so it jammed them up.
I think that whole thing has to be looked at in some detail, and I know PEMA is doing this, looked at in some detail so that we do have adequate communica-tions that can be enacted at the appropriate time.
What else, oh, the last one.
Again, this is ours which we have taken corrective action on, NBC courses, with the courses having started last weekend.
BY CHAIRMM! WRIGHT:
Q I guess it would be incumbent upon us to probably
,r:~
incorporate these same recommendations in whatever report we t
i produce?
i A
Yes, sir, that would be most appreciated by me and I am sure the National Guard of this state.
Q Help m. a little bit with the first one, units and individuals located within a five mile radius of the nuclear incident not being considered a part of the initial force avail-able for emargency, would you explain the rationale of that?
A Yes, that number, that five mile thing, I don't know if it has come to this Committee's attention or not, but that was the one thing that communities were told to prepare for, our counties, five miles.
That was told before the Three Mile J
85 Island incident.
It seems logical to me, but I am not an expert in radiological spewing of active reactors, but that number, I believe, comes out of the Rasmussen report, which is the only professional document that exists on this kind of a hazard.
Initially, it would not seem to be a good thing to do, to say that you would never have to evacuate, particularly from that area.
So that seems like a good number.
In that case, before the Guards were activated, called to action, probably the inci-dont would occur, and our people, naturally, would do the same thing as the civilian populace is doing.
They would take care of their loved ones and their families.
We feel as though we could not get the force out of there,
.nd if so, they would be
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thinking about other personalized things.
So that was the basis of the concept to bring the people into the disaster area.
In other vords, our peripheral units vould aluays be outside coming in to help.
O I would assume that five mile could probably be changed now that we are talking about a ten mile plan?
The language ought to be changed a little bit to include evacuated area.
A I think, I don't know what is going to happen there,
~.
I am not involved in that part of it, but it seems to me that the professionals, the experts, really ought to get their act
86 together and say what is the radiological threat and what is the nominal distance to plan for.
Let every~oody know.
You just can't go around and say so many mil 11 rems, or something, rems or roetgens in terms we use a little bit differently.
We call them rads, it is the absorption dose.
You got to say ahead of time so that people jn the local communities can use their own assets, counties can help them within this area and then the state forcea come to bear if it is scmething that cannot be handled at the lover level.
Q In your former role as Mayor of Lancaster, do you have any comments you would like to make or recommendations?
A Well, yes.
Gee, I don't know whether I should
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answar that or not.
I am not in the mayor's business anymore.
But, you knou, at the county level, I think anything that the state can do to give the counties a greater capability should be done.
Now, I think it comes down to a lot of things, some of which are in the mill now and maybe have been working all the time that I was unaware of.
But training, you have to have qualified people, at least that hard corps group of profes-si^nals to lead the volunteers, who are e::tremely important in any kind of a situation like this.
But maybe the stabe could have the kinds of legislation which would help the countios achieve that end.
I think that would be a good thing to at
/
F
87 least consider.
I think down at the city level, you know in the case of the city that I was mayor of, for many years we relied on cour les, called Civil Defense in those days.
And once we got a few other problems solved down there, I looked into that and found out that there might be a time when the City of Lancaster per se might have its oun disaster, not spreading outside of its borders and that we should have the capability there.
I believe it is true now that from the state level each political entity has to have, in writing, a plan.
I guess the one thing, speaking as a mayor, former mayor rather, whi;n I would not like to see happen because it happens too darn often and I am still sensitive to this is to
(_)
have a law passed at the state or federal level, wh;rever it is way up above these local guys and say you will do this and you will do that and not put the dollara with it.
I think that I speak with some degree of emotion on that point and I know most mayors, most local officials feel much the same as I do.
So, if there are certain things in the wisdom of the Gen 0ral Assembly or the Governor of this Stato, that you fol';s feel or he does should happan at a state level, and I think a regional kind of disaster is a state responsibility, maybe it's so big that the feds have to get involved in it, then those things should be planned ahead and the dollars should go f
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BS l
with that state responsibility, should go to the community.
I probably shouldn't have answered that, sir.
BY REPRESEUTATIVE KLII!G.GIAN:
Q General Scott, on your recommendation attempts, that the feasibility of preparing records for individuals as-signed 'laties in the area be studied, is that information com-puter'. zed?
A No.
This is, you know, in the Armed Forces you have a form for everything.
This is DV Form 1141.
Q That's what I'm worried about.
A And it would become a part of an individual's record.
You see, none of our troups have ever been e:: posed.
G Uhen I read that I was thinking of Sgt. Jones who may have worked at one of these installations, is up to his maximum or really clo ie to his ma::imum level.
I am thinking if it were computerized, you could look at this quickly and you would know who might be withheld frora that particular area.
That is why I was thinking of the computerization rather than going through all the jackets to find out who should or should not be assigned to a certain area.
A I think it would certainly be a great asset to have that information.
Q Vith all the computers we have around Harrisburg,
~
89 we'ought to.be able to find one.
A I don't know, we will certainly take a look at it.
BY CHliIRMAIT VRIGh~f:
Q Allow me to. interrupt here.
The several times that I have been in a nuclear plant,.-the badge that I wore was sent someplace for analysis and I got a computer printout back from some source, and I don't know what the source was.
And I ar just wondering if you may not want to inquire of the IIational Guardsmen and have in.their folders, maybe the initiation of the future computerization program, those personnel who have been subject to this analysis in the past because of civilian employment or some event.
Conceivably, you might have to make a decision some day not "o allow somebody in, not because of their
{
activity in the Guards, but because of their activity outside the Guards.
A It is certainly something to consider.
It is very l.
sophisticated to get to there from where we are now.
I think you weuld agree with that.
To take my own case, I have been a participant in about ten nuclear test shots in my life.
I have been in various plants where weapons are fabricated.
I don't i
know how I would ever regeneratu my own exposure level through all of this thing.
It is very sophisticated capabilities.
f~
[
m 90 Q
Let me follow that up.
You said you have been in ten situations or ; thereabouts.
All right, you know, apparently at the end of each one of them there was an analysis done of that decimator you had on and you did get a computer printout.
Have you ever had a cumulative?
A No, that was what I was thinking about when you were posing your point.
I have been in a trench with 10,000 other people and set off a test device out in Nevada'and you go through all the drills that they tell you, you close your eyes and keep your face away from detonation and then you stand up and look.
And whet. you look at the cloud, you look back and you see all the Joshua trees on fire.
And there is just thousands
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(_. )
of us involved in that sort of thing.
I don't know what kind of records were kept.
I tnink it is a good thing to consider.
CHAIEI!J; WRIGHT:
I think the staff may want to write that down and found out whoever does the testing, do we have a centralized data collection bank so I know what my ex-posure was in my six visits, so I can compare whether it is safe to go on my seventh visit.
BY MR. HOLLIS:
Q In following up with that, I thought DER, as a re-sult of reading your report about availability of film badges and things like that in the service, and. based upon the avail-g v.. '
a
91 ability of equipment, I was informed that that is a service that you buy into and each month they issue you a badge and at the end of the month you turn it in, it is road, computerized, you get back a report and it is not something that you can store.
So film badges are only good for about 90 days, then it loses its effect.
Basically, what they said, was that unless you bonsht that service, contract with them, that they would send you badges and provide you with this up-to-date reading, that that is the way they do it for their employees and also the employees of different facilities and that it is expensive.
A I just simply cannot give you a more precise answer on that point.
BY CHAIRIWi WRIGHT:
0
'dhat about active duty personnel?
Does the Defense Department keep a cumulative record?
A At this, int in time I would presume that they did.
I do not know.
REPRESENTATIVZ DORR:
Jim, I can recall very broad news coverage about, maybe, a year ago the Defense Departtent requests of individuals to indicate to the Defense Department whether they have been in the kinds of tests that Major Scott has bean t;1 king about because they didn't have records.
THE 1/ITNESS':
I had forgobten about that, there was
+,
92
(-),
L a movement on like that.
MR. HOLLIS:
There is a suit in Federal Court right now by individuals wr.o have alleged to have developed cancer as a result of participating in the Nevada tests back in the 50's, because they say no record was ever kept of the amount of radi-ation that they received.
They were told there was none when in fact there was and it appears now that they are taking a survey trying to find out if the people ever participated, they are supposed to contact them.
But I have one question, would the General supply a copy of your new plan that was developed in June to the Com-mittee for the record?
p),
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THE WITNESS:
Of our overall National Guard emer-gency plan, yes, we would be happy to provide that to you, sure.
CHAIRMAN URIGHT:
Any additional questions and com-ments from the Committee?
Representative McKelvey.
BY REPRESENTATIVE McKELVEY:
O General, you mentioned in your report, I would like to go back to the communications aspect, one of the problems that we had in four or five counties was a problem of communica-tions.
With the basic load of division assets, with both land and radio communications, how many counties could you cover?
Do you have an idea?
e
/
93
'A
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Well, in tne report, I'll see if I can pick it out for you, it shows on page nine you will find under communica-tions, we heve a communications plan provided for the use of the following:
radio nets in the Pennsylvania Armory Hational Guard single sideband cet, we communicate with all of our units through that; Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS), that is, you know, the amateur shortwave band.
That is quite extensive.
I couldn't S ve you that.
But I think one of the bigge~st assets i
the Guard has is listed down there under subparagraph (3) which shows the capability of the Air Guard.
We have deep after deep filled with all sorts of communication equipment which was used to great effect in Johnstown and which, again, could cover the
(_)
state.
Within the units, as you know, Representative McKelvey, you would have to rely on your integral communications, which include radio and telephone.
I think we have a pretty good capability to communicate with our people.
l Q
I was referring to supplementing vire communications 1
within the county?
A Well, again, I think tilat is a little broader ques-tion than the one addressed to me, to military affairs, and I know that Lt. Governor Scranton in one of the PEMA meetings of which I, PE:4A board meetings, of which I am a member, has under-way a complete review of the communications equipment for the i
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94 p
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whole state to serve in disasters.
CHAIRMAN WRIGHT:
General, we thank you.
You have been a very cooperative, interesting witness and I am glad to see the blue uniform.
THE WITNESS:
Thank you, sir.
I want my army friends not to worry, I have a lot of army experience as well.
Thank you for letting me appear here.
CHAIIEUd URIGHT:
Thank you.
I think it would be appropriate to adjourn the meeting and we will be meeting again the week after next.
('.Thoreupon the hearing was closed at 12:45 P.M.)
V I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence taken by me before the House Select Committee - Three Mile Island are fully and accurately indicated in my notes af that thic 13 a true and correct transcript of same.
LLJls $' /
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Dorothy M. Malone Registered Pro fessional Reporter 135 S.
Landin Street Hurrr.elatown, Pennsylvania 17036 o
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