ML20040B122
| ML20040B122 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Diablo Canyon  |
| Issue date: | 01/19/1982 |
| From: | Erikson K JOINT INTERVENORS - DIABLO CANYON, YALE UNIV., NEW HAVEN, CT |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20040B117 | List: |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 8201250184 | |
| Download: ML20040B122 (14) | |
Text
7 Ogy4TQ l
TESTIMONY OF
',,2 DR. KAI T. ERIKSON
'82 JE 17 P7:19 3
i ON BEHALF OF JOINT INTERVENORS
's.A JANUARY 19, 1982 5
CONTENTION 1
~
~
C 7
My name is Kai T. Erikson.
I have been a Professor of s
8 Sociology and American Studies at Yale University since 1966, s
n 9,
and Editor of The Yale Review since 1979.
I received a B.A.
10 in; sociology from Reed College in 1953, and both a M.A.
in 11 1955 and a Ph.D. in 1963 from the University of Chicago.
I 12 }:'held a' joint appointment in the Departments of Psychiatry and 13 Sociolo9y at the University of Pittsburgh from 1959 to 1963, 14 and a similar appointment at Emory University from 1963 to 15 1966.
I am a Fellow of the American Sociological Association 16 and served as an elected member of its governing Council from
~
17 1974 to 1977.
I am the immediate past President of the IS Eastern Sociological Society, and I was President of the
~
19 Society'for_Ehe Study of Social Problems in 1970-1971.
\\
bt
.In recent years my professional work has focused 21 increasingly on human responses to emergencies.
Between 1973 22 and 1976 I did an intensive study of the Buffalo Creek flood 23 of 1972, and I wrote a book on the topic which in 1977 won 24 the Sorokin Award of the American Sociological Association 25 for the best book written in sociology during the preceding 26 year as well as a Nomination for the National Book Award.
27 Since that time I have done a briefer study of the effects of 28 mercury contamination on an Ojibwa Indian Band in Northwest 8201250104 820111 PDR ADOCK 050002 1
_.. _ ~
1 Ontario, and I have written on general problems of toxic waste 2
disposal with particular reference to the situation at Love 3
Canal in upstate New York and on the bombings of Hiroshima and 4
Nagasaki in 1945.
In the past two years I have kept abreast 5
of research dealing with human reactions to the incident at 6
Three Mile Island, and I testified on related matters before 7
the Licensing Board of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 8
considering a restart of Tril-1.
I have lectured widely on the D
general subject of human emergencies, including the principal 10 address to the Red Cross National Convention in Miami, 11 Florida, in 1977.
In the course of the various activities l
12 described above, I have read a substantial part of the
[
13 available literature on responses to disaster from both a 14 sociological and a psychiatric standpoint.
15 16 I have recently reviewed three documents relevant to 17 these present proceedings -- the PRC Voorhees Evacuation Times 18 Accessment for the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, Phase I 19 and Phase II Reports; Chapter Four of the TERA Corporation 20 report entitled " Earthquake Emergency Planning at Diablo 21 Canyon"; and the San Luis Obispo County Nuclear Power Plant 22 Emergency Response Plan, revision B (October, 1981).
23 The main burden of my testimony is that the three 2i documents, taken together, do not constitute an adequate "5
emergency plan for response in the event of a serious accident 20 at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, particularly if the 27 accident were of a sort to require large-scale evacuation.
28 The documents outline in quite some detail how an evacuation '
l
i l
1 could be managed if everyone involved were to behave in the 2
expected manner.
To that extent, they describe what is 3
technically and logistically possible.
'l But it is my opinion that those documents need to be 5
supplemented by additional information on the social and 6
psychological dispositions of the human actors who play a part 7
in the various scenarios, because once we have estimates as to 8
how rapidly people could evacuate the danger zone, we then 1
9 need further estimates as to how people are likely to behave 10 in fact.
Without these further estimates, confidence in the 11 feasibility of evacuation as a means to protect the public may 12 be misplaced.
l 13 I submit that two additional kinds of information are I'l necessary to an adequate emergency plan.
I 15 First, any accident serious enough to require evacuation 16 of the area surrounding the power plant is likely'to be II traumatic for a number of local residents, and final emergency l
18 plans should take into account what has been learned in other ID crisis situations about the way people typically respond to 20 moments of severe stress.
I cannot deal now with the full 21 range of social and psychological reactions described in the 22 available studies, but I would like to note three that may be 23 of particular relevance here.
24 There are good reasons to suppose that crisis situations f
25 involving the risk of radiation or some other form of 26 contamination are different from the typical run of natural 27 disasters and human accidents.
Most emergencies, whether they 28 result from acts of God (such as floods, storms, earthquakes) _.
-. ~
i I
1 or acts of men (such as accidental explosions or deliberate 2
bombings), have a cicar beginning and a cicar ending.
Sooner i
j 3
or later the flood waters recede, the winds abate, the smoke
)
4 clears, the bombers leave; an "all clear" is sounded both 6
literally and figuratively to indicate that the incident is 6
over and the source of danger gone.
But when an invisible
)
7 threat hangs in the air or is lodged in the tissues of the 8
body for an indeterminate amount of time, and the survivors U
have no sure way of knowing how much damage has been done or I
IO is yet to be done, the event is never quite over.
The cause i
II for alarm never quite disappears.
This has been the i
I2 situation, for example, in such diverse places as Hiroshima I3 j
and Nagasaki, Sevesc, Minamata, the Love Canal, certain Il districts of Northwest Ontario, and Three Mile Island -- all i
IU of them places where residents have reason to fear that they 1
1
'l 16 (and maybe even children yet unborn) have been contaminated in 17 one way or another.
Events of that kind often provoke a 18 deeper and more lasting form of anxiety.
IU There are also good reasons to suppose that a substantial 4
20 number of people who are exposed to an immediate peril will I
2I over-react in the sense that they will evacuate before being f
22 advised to, will move longer distances than advised, and, in i
20 l general, will respond to their own feelings of alarm by doing i
24 j more than is required and doing it earlier than is required.
20 This tendency has been noted in many different emergencies and 26 has been called " hyper-vigilance," "the counter-dicaster oI syndrome," "the evacuation shadow phenomenon," and so on.
At as the same time, however, it is also likely that another i i i
4 i
j 1
substantial number of exposed people with under-react, for one 2
very common reaction to moments of crisis is to become 3
immobilized, to go numb, to freeze.
This tendency has also 4
been noted in many different emergencies and has been called 5
"the disaster syndrome," " psychic numbing," and so on.
It is G
my opinion that both of these tendencies, but especially the 7
tendency to over-react, becomes sharper when radiation or some 8
other contaminant is involved because people.do not know what 9
the dangerous substance looks like or feels like, how far it 10 can reach out into the countryside, or how long its effects 11 can last.
Many more people evacuated the regions around Three 12 Mile Island than were advised to, for example, and those who 1:1 did so drove many more miles on the average than was 11 necessary.
15 And there are good reasons to suppose, finally, that IG people who are expected to play helping roles in an evacuation 17 and who also are members of families will be in a situation of 18 very marked conflict if an emergency is declared.
To say that 1
19 there will be conflict is not to say tnat we know in advance j
20 how everyone will resolve it, but I would regard it as a 3
21 matter of everyday common sense that a number of emergency 22 workers will first go home to tend their children in the event 2:1i of a crisis no matter what commitments they have elsewhere, 21 and they will do so because they feel, as is the case with 2T) parents everywhere, that their major responsibility is to
'26 attend the needs of their own offspring.
A sociologist has no l
l 27 professional warrant to call such behavior instinctual 28 (although the great majority of biologists and psychiatrists l l
6
._____.__._,m
i 4
I would probably do so), but he is certainly in a position to 2
point out that many research studies have found people i
3 reluctant to turn to emergency duties until such time as they
(
'I have been reassured about the safety of their families.
This O
general finding was phrasd well by James Cornell:
6 First, the basic unit of human life -- the family -- emerges as the single most 7
important force influencing behavior.
Survivors rapidly turn their own anxiety into 8
concern for their kin.
A person's first regard is for saving family members, often at 9
the expense of other victims or oneself.
Even officials charged with the safety of an 10 entire community find their first allegiance is to their family.
As Ralph Linton has 11 written, "In Gotterdammerung.
.the last man will spend his last hours searching for his 12 wife and child."
13 Any evacuation plan that takes for granted the readiness of I1 local emergency workers to report for duty, regardless of 15 other family obligations, runs a high -- and in my opinion I
16 unacceptable -- risk of failure.
17 18 The second kind of information I would regard as 19 necessary for an adequate emergency plan is data on the 20 attitudes and outlooks of the people who are expected to 21 evacuate in the event of a crisis or who are expected to aid i
22 in the evacuation effort itself.
A number of assumptions 2:II have been made throughout the three documents I have reviewed 21 about the way in which people will behave if an evacuation is l
25 ordered, and some of the most important of those assumptions 26J could b.! examined in greater detail by a survey of the 27 l l
relevant population.
The technology for such a study.is 28 every bit as accessible as that for the kinds of estimates
I already undertaken.
Ilere, in a rough order of priority, are
(
t o
some of the assumptions that concern me:
,J The documents (or " plan") assume that emergency workers r
4 who reside within the danger zone can be counted on to report 1
5 for duty whether or not their own families have assembled and i
II evacuated, and this assumption is problematic for all of the 7
reasons noted above.
It may be reasonable to take for i
8 granted that of ficers f rom the California Ifighway Patrol and D
County Sheriff's Office, as well as physicians and nurses and e
10 other medical personnel, will report as expected.
But a very Il large number of other people figure in the plan as well --
l 12 people to drive school busses and the rest at the available l
13 fleet, peopic to staff the communication centers and conduct l1 telephonic sorveys, people to monitor the spread of radiation 15 and set up check points of one kind or another and work with 1
16 decontamination teams, people to drive ambulances and 17 wreckers and whatever other vehicles are brought into play to 18 transport the disabled and to move public address systems l
ID from place to place, people to repair roads and erect 20 barricades and maintain care centers and handle necessary f
i t
21 food and water supplies and, in general, carry out the 22 hundreds of other tasks that might, in a real emergency, be 23 required.
As things presently stand, we have no way of 2I knowing what all of those people are likely to do in the 20 event of a serious crisis (although it may be instructive to o(I notice that many of the emergency workers who are expected to 27 aid evacuation if yet another accident should strike Three 28 Mile Island -- fire fighters and bus drivers among them -- [
i m
i i
l 1
1 have let it be known that their f amilies would come first).
2 A carefully designed and carefully conducted study could 3
provide valuable information on two matters:
(a) how the 4
people of San Luis obispo County who may be called upon for 5
emergency duty feel about those prospects, (b) what G
proportion of the emergency work force has family obligations 7
that might prove to be a source of conflict, and (c) what 8
actions the emergency workers intend to take in the event a 9
serious accident occurs.
10 The plan also assumes that emergency workers who reside 11 I outside the danger zone will move into it if asked to do so, 12 and that assumption, too, is problematic.
Police and medical 13 personnel from elsewhere in the county could presumably be 14 relied upon, but it is quite another matter to take for 15 granted that everyone else who makes up the emergency work 16 force --truck drivers, heavy equipment operators, laborers, 17 volunteer firemen -- will be willing to leave places of 18 relative safety and expose themselves to hazard, especially 19 if they are expected to arrive equipped wth dosimeters, 20 iodine blocking pills, protective gear of one kind or 21 l another, and other reminders that the work they are about to 22 do may prove very dangerous indeed.
It is worth noting, 23 moreover, that emergency workers who live a few miles outside 21 the perimeter of the danger zone may not feel confident that 25 their families are safe and hence they may engage in 26 evacuation efforts themselves.
That is roughly what happened 27 at Three Mile Island, and careful testing of the local 28
/// _ _ _ _ _
I population could sharpen our estimate as to whether it might 3
happen in San Luis Obispo County as well.
3 The plan further assumes that parents of school-age
'I children will be willing to evacuate without first-hand 5
reassurances that their offspring are being safely conveyed 6
out of the area, and that is problematic as well.
It may 7
turn out that the residents of the county will feel very 8
l comfortable with this arrangement, but given what social 1
U scientists have learned about the closeness of family ties J
10 pnd the anxieties most parents have concerning the safety of 11 their children, it would seem foolhardy to take that view for 12 granted.
And if a fair number of parents admit upon 13 questioning, as I would expect them to, that they might be 11 very tempted to drive to the school themselves, then there i
15 '
would be substantially more traffic on the roads than the 16 j
present estimates allow for.
17 The plan assumes, in addition, that residents will not 18 only believe the warnings they receive but will follow the IU directives given them by local officials, and both of those 20 l assumptions should be regarded as problematic until such time 2I as more information is available.
Whether or not the 22 agencies that might be in a position to issue warnings are 20 viewed as credible by county residents should be fairly easy 2'I to ascertain.
Whether or not local officials can reasonably 20 expect their instructions to be followed, however, may be
.yI somewhat more complicated.
For example, for people who are 2I directed to take shelter, the impulse to travel to the spot
<>g where one's family is located will be great, no matter what
-' l
F 1
the risk of exposure on the way.
Or, as another example, in 2
the event of staged or partial evacuation, the impulse to 3
leave may be a hard one to overcome for a number of people who 1
are not asked to evacuate.
This was demonstrated during the 5
TMI accident when a substantially greater percentage of the 6
population evacuated than was advised to do so.
7 The plan assumes, finally, that vehiclar traffic will 8
drain out of the danger zone in " preferred evacuation i
9 directions," and that assumption needs to be reviewed along i
j 19 with the others discussed here.
For one thing, the plans 11 calls for some traffic to move toward the power plant for at i
12 least a short time (as is the case, for instance, when IU evacuees from Arroyo Grande are asked to travel north on 11 State 227 before veering east on U.S.
101), and there is no 15 consideration given to the possibility that people will balk 16 at being ordered to take what may seem at first to be an 17 illogical and perhaps even dangerous route.
Moreover, the 18 plan assumes that drivers will have no other object in mind 19 than to vacate the danger zone along the given roads, but it I
20 is likely that some of them will have particular destinations 4
21 in mind -- the home of a relative or friend, say.
If, for 22 cither of those reasons, vehicles enter the road network 23 moving in the " wrong" direction or cause congestion at 21 intersections in an effort to do so, the evacuation of the 20 area might very well be adversely affected.
l 26 i
<,d It in my opinion, then, that a social and psychological 28 profile of the local population should be undertaken by an i
l
i j
1 able research organization, for if any of the assumptions 2
described above turn out to be unwarranted by even a small 3
margin, then the time estimates on which the plan now relies
[
'I would have to be revised.
The plan is full of detail, but
+
5 whether or not it is capable of implementation depends to a 6
very large extent on the attitudes and intentions and 7
emotional reflexes of the human beings charged with carrying 8
it out.
If it is incapable of implementation, then simple 9
logic dictates that it will provide no real protection to the 10 public.
t 11 The actual character of the study being proposed here 12 would have to be outlined in greater detail than these 13 circumstances (or my competencies) permit, but it is l
l l'1 reasonable to presume that it would take the form of a J
15 questionnaire instrument administered to a random sample of 16 the " relevant" population -
" relevant," for these purposes, 17 meaning those people who are expected to take part in any 18 evacuation and those people who are expected to serve as 19 emergency workers in the process.
20 l Such a survey would serve two purposes.
It would prove 21 invaluable as a supplement to the present emergency plan, and 22 the information it could supply would help immensely in
{
23 whatever programs of public information are being 21 contemplated for the area.
l 25 Thank you.
An abbreviated resume is attached.
26 27 28 1 i
Kai T. Erikson Department of Sociology Born in Vienna, Austria, 1931 Yale University U.S. citizen (derivative, 1937)
Ne> Haven, Connecticut Married, two children l
EDUCATION 1949-1950 University of California, Berkeley 1950-1953 Reed College (B.A.)
1953-1955 University of Chicago (h.A.)
1957-1963 University of Chica6o (Ph.D.)
IOSITIONS 199+-1955 Research Fellow. Family Study. Center, University of Chicago i
1955-1957 Social Science Technician, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Washington, D.C.
(while on active duty with U.S. Army) 1959-1963 Instructor to Assistant Professor, Departments of Psychiatry and Sociology, University of Pittsbur6h 1963-1966 Associate Professor, Departments of Psychiatry and Sociology, Encry University 1966-Associate Professor to Professor, Department of Sociology and American Studies Program, Yale University 1968-1969 Fellow, Center for Advance! Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California 1969-1973 Master, Trumbull College. Yale University (Chair,
~
Council of Masters, 1970-1973) 1973-1974 Visiting Professor, Department of Sociology, University of New Mexico 1974-1977 Chair American Studies Program, Yale University 1979-Editor, The Yale Review
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS Books Wayward Puritans: _ A Study in the Sociolory of Deviance (New York: John Wiley, 1966)
Everythine in its Fath: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976)
English edition entitled In the Wake of the Flood (Lcndon: Geor6e Allen & Unwin,1979)
Articles
~
i "The Confirmation of the Delinquent," Chicago Review, Winter Issue, 1957 (with Erik H. Erikson)
" Patient Role and Social Uncertainty: A Dilemr.a of the Mentally Ill," Psychiatry, 20:263-27, 1957 "Ihe Functions of Deviance in Groups," Social Froblems, 7:98-107, 1959 (with Robert A. Dentler)
" Impressions of Soviet Psychiatry: Some Travel Notes,"
Fnychiatric_Cornunications, 5: 1-12, 1962
" Notes on the Sociology of Devlance," Social Froblems, 9:307-314, 1962
~
"A Return to Zero," American Scholar, 36: 1 74-146, 1966 r
"A Connent on Disguised Cbservation in Sociology," Social Problems, 14: 366-373, 1967
" Case Records in the Mental Hcspital," in Stanton Wheeler, Files and Docciers in American Lif'J (New editor, On Record:
e 1909)
(with Daniel J. Gilbertsor York: Russell Sage, "Sociolcgy and the Historial Perspective," American Sociolorist, 5:331-333, 1970
" Sociology: That Awkwani Age," Social Problems, 19:431-436, 1972
" Introduction," In Search of Common Ground Convernations with Erik H. Erikson and Huey P. Newton (New York: Norton, 1973)
" Loss of Communality on Buffalo Creek," American Journal of Psychiatrz, 133:302-306, 1976
a SELECfCD, FELICATIC!is (continual)
"Cn Teaching Sociology," tiew England Socio1cgint,1: 35-40, 1979
/r
~
Book Reviews American Journal of Sociology
/
American Scholar j
American Sociolacical Review Conten;crary Sociology i'
liew York Tires Book Revicw Trannaction Yale Law Journal i
i hcl! ORS McIver Award, American Socio'.ogical Accociation, 1967 i
Sorckin Award, American Sociological Ascociation, 1977 lltCFESSIO!!AL l'D3ERSHIFS Anerican Sociological Ancociation (Chair, Corr.ittee on Profennional Ethien, 1971-1973; Council, 1971+-1977; Connittee on Executive Office and Budget, 1978-1961) i i
Society for the Study of Social Problena (President, 1970-1971)
I Eastern Sociolecical Society (Iresident, 1980-1931) f
.i I,
/4S/
Septenber 1979
, ~,~ ~ ~.a-c th (% is !.y:A-Y YO~ '7
"' '?"A
" # " G YhY2 p(/, ll,-3 e'y(
s e/>uk/ s::ws Q!?' I'd "'" C I~' ' ' ' "' Y 5,
g,,'
'Y S'f'CU!f f$yr.7e uL.* W Y.*
,ggo) 6,4 a,;: n + w wrm)
-