ML20076L596

Testimony of a Kuncho Re New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution Contentions III.12 & III.13.Concerns Re Evacuation of Beach People Discussed.Certificate of Svc Encl

ML20076L596
Person / Time
Site:	Seabrook
Issue date:	07/15/1983
From:	Kuncho A HAMPTON, NH, MASSACHUSETTS, COMMONWEALTH OF
To:
Shared Package
ML20076L499	List: ML20076L497 ML20076L514 ML20076L526 ML20076L545 ML20076L588 ML20076L596 ML20076L619
References
ISSUANCES-OL, NUDOCS 8307190247
Download: ML20076L596 (9)

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1 Testimony of Anthony Kuncho before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board in the matter of Public Service Company of New Hampshire, et al, (Seabrook Station, Units 1 and 2) , Docket No s. 50-443 OL and 50-444 OLc RE: NECNP Contentions III.12 and III.13 July-15, 1983 i

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F Testimony of Anthony Kuncho:

Q. 1) Please - state your name and address.

A. My name is Anthony Kuncho. I reside at 11 Wentworth Avenue, Hampton, New Hampshire.

Q. 2) Please give your occupation and all other background relevant to this testimony.

A. I am Fire Chief of Hampton, New Hampshire, and have held that position for one year. Prior to that, I was Fire Chief of Salem, New Hampshire. I worked for the Salem Fire Department seventeen year s, as a firefighter, lieutenant, deputy chief and chief, before coming to Hampton. In addition, for a number of year s, I have been coming to Hampton Beach a s a visitor during the summer months.

Q. 3) What observations have you made with regard to the summer population at Hampton Beach that would have a l -bearing on evacuating the beach area in the event of a radiological emergency at Seabrook?

A. Hampton Beach is packed with people during the summer month s. On almost any -given day in the summer, except when it rains, the beach is packed; blanket-to-blanket

with people. This, of course, does not account for the large number of people who are not at the beach, but in the shops and restaurants, or at their cottages or motels. There are fireworks and a band concert at the beach every Wednesday night, and on that night the beach and sidewalks and even the road on Ocean Boulevard will be packed with people as f ar north and south a s you can see, at least a mile in either direction of the band shell.

I have also observed that the cottages at the beach area are always filled at least to double capacity.

Typically, two f amilies will share one cottage and, in addition, relatives of these f amilie s will of ten come -

down to stay with them for a few days. I had my own experience with this when I moved to Hampton Beach and took a cottage for two weeks last summer. Before I knew it, almost all my relatives or in-laws had come down to spend a few days with us at the beach, with as many and two and three families there at one time.

This is not at all unusual. We get calls all the time at the Fire Station from people asking, for example, if it is legal to have twelve people staying in one bedroom or from cottage owner s wanting to know what they can do because there are fif ty people staying at

-their cottage which they had rented to just one family.

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i Q. 4) Have you observed any increase since 1978 in the numbers of people coming to Hampton Beach during the summer months?

A. Yes. I have observed a definite increase in the number of people coming here during the summer. This may be attributable, in part, to the fact that the Town has started advertising the beach area, e specially in Canada. Last year, the Town's Hampton Beach precinct spent $75,000.00 on advertising.

Q. 5) What observations have you made of parking at the beach relative to evacuation?

A. The parking lots, e specially on weekend s, are always filled to capacity by 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning.

Many of the motels and hotel lots have also been taking in parking in addition to that provided for their patrons. Mo st of these lots are overfilled.

The owner s have people leave their car keys with the lot attendant so that they can block in other cars and fill up the entire lot area.

People also park wherever they can in yards and on the

! streets. On this past July 4th, the cars were parked l on both sides of the road all the way back to the Tide l

Mill Bridge, which is about a mile f rom the beach.

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4 The Police Department does not have enough officers to deal with all the cars parked illegally on the streets during summer weekends. We find cars parked all the time in designated fire lane s, even though that can lead to a $35.00 fine. This, of course, creates a

, considerable problem in trying to move traffic and can impede emergency vehicles trying to get through.

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'Q. 6) Have you observed any increase since 1978 in the I parking f acilities at Hampton Beach?

A. Yes. There has been a considerable increase in the {

number of parking f acilities.. The Town added two new municipal lots this year. Also, because the parking business is so lucrative here, we have seen a lot of blacktopping of private property to try to accomodate l l

the tremendous number of automobiles coming iiico the l area.. One example of this happening is the miniature golf course at the beach which wa s paved over and turned into a parking lot this year.

Q. 7) What observations have you made as to the traffic in the summer at Hampton Beach?

A. The traffic is always extremely heavy here in the summer. On weekends the cars driving into. Hampton are always bumper-to-bumper throughout the day at least as L __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ______ __________ _

far back as the Seabrook Bridge. Typically on weekend s the trafi-ic will extend f ar beyond that. One. ,

day this summer the cars coming into Town were backed up as f ar as Raymond, New Hampshire, a town 25 miles away. On most weekend night s, the traffic continues to be bumper-to-bumper coming into Hampton as late as 11:00 P.M. On summer weekends it can usually take as long as 40 minutes to an hour to travel just one mile down Ocean Boulevard. One day this summer, for example, it took our fire trucks, at about 2:00 P.M.,

over 40 minutes to drive from a fire at the Seabrook Bridge down Ocean Boulevard to the Fire Station at C Street, a distance of about 1-1/2 mile s. Coming into the beach from Church Street, to the north, can take even longer. From that direction, it will often take 40 minutes just to drive a half mile. The se times are the norm for a summer weekend; there are times when it can take much longer to travel these same distances down the beach.

l Q. 8) What observations have you made with regard to car

accidents at Hampton that might have a bearing on l

evacuation?

A. On weekends there are -u sually a number of accidents, particularly at the Seabrook Bridge and at Church e

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l Street where it intersects with Ocean Boulevard.

There is usually a bottleneck going over the Seabrook bridge and typically the accidents there involve 4 or 1 5-car pile ups. One weekend afternoon this summer we had five accidents in a row at the Bridge. The fire truck did not have time to get back to the station before it had to turn around because of another l

. accident. On an average, these _ accidents tie up l

traffic in excess of thirty minutes to an hour. Just l

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in the course of one day this summer, we also had five f or six accidents at Church Street. That area can be particularly bad because traffic from several streets converge there into one lane.

O. 9) Ba sed on this testimony and other observations you have made as Fire Chief, what concerns, if any, do you have with regard to evacuating people during the summer months from Hampton Beach in the event of a radiological emergency at Seabrook?

A. I have many concerns regarding our ability to evacuate people from this area during the summer months. My primary concern is the inordinate length of time it will take to move everybody out of the beach area at once. There are only four ways to leave Hampton Beach and, except for one, all are just two-lane roads.

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c Under normal summer conditions, when by comparison only a small number of people are leaving the beach at one time, we almost always see bad bottlenecks at Church Street and the Seabridge Bridge, the two major exit route; from the beach. I have seen the traffic get tied up even worse when we have sudden rain shower s which cause many of the beach people to leave the area at once. My office overlooks the large parking lot at D Street and when there is a summer rain shower, I have seen it take as long as 1-1/2 hours for the cars just to leave the parking lot there. And that is a situation in which many of the car s in the lot are not leaving. The bottlenecks would be considerably worse if all the cars were to try to leave at once. I have also noticed that there are more accidents during summer storms.

One of my major concerns is that, during an evacuation, emergency vehicles may be unable to get through to clear up an accident and get traffic moving again. I have seen people try to make four lanes out of two-lane roads when the traffic gets bad, thus making the road s impa ssable for emergency traf fic.

Even erecting road blocks to try to direct the traffic may serve little purpose, since my experience fighting

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e o-fires has shown that curious on-lookers often try to break through barriers. Relative to this, I would expect people to panic during an evacuation due to a nuclear accident, making traf fic control all the more difficult. I have seen people near panic leaving the beach during thunder storms.

The other problem I foresee relates to the type of crowd we get at Hampton Beach. People come here in the evening to party and, as a consequenge, of ten get quite drunk and rowdy. In my experience people in such a state are likely to cause more traffic accidents and are less apt to follow directions, thus adding to the problem of evacuating this area.

An additional concern, related to this, is whether we will have sufficient personnel to control the crowd s, direct the traffic, and clear accidents from the a

roads. In the event of a nuclear accident, many of our firefighters will at least make sure that their f amilies are. safe before reporting f or duty. And some I are likely not to report at all. This will certainly compound the problems of evacuation since, as it i s, we barely have enough personnel to handle the traffic problems associated with a normal summer weekend day at the beach.

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