ML20082C894

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Testimony of Cole on Contention 25 Re Role Conflict
ML20082C894
Person / Time
Site: Shoreham File:Long Island Lighting Company icon.png
Issue date: 11/18/1983
From: Cole S
NEW YORK, STATE UNIV. OF, STONY BROOK, NY, SUFFOLK COUNTY, NY
To:
Shared Package
ML20082C880 List:
References
ISSUANCES-OL-3, NUDOCS 8311220237
Download: ML20082C894 (38)
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Ecard

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In the Matter of )

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i LONG ISLAND LIGHTING COMPANY ) Docket No. 50-322-OL-3

) (Emergency Planning)

(Shoreham Nuclear Power Station, )

Unit 1) )

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Testimony of Stephen Cole On Behalf Of Suffolk County On Contention 25 -- Role Conflict O. Please state your name and summarize your professional qualifications.

A. My name is Stephen Cole. My qualifications as a survey researcher are set forth in my testimony on Contention 23 --

Evacuation Shadow Phenomenon.

4 Q. What is the purpose of this testimony?

.. The purpose of this testimony is to address Emergency

, Planning Contention 25 -- Role Conflict. The concept of role j conflict, its basis, likelihood and results, both generally and with respect to the LILCO Plan, are discussed in the' testimony 0Ood$fp

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of Kai T. Erikson and James H. Johnson, Jr. on Contention 25.

My testimony will focus on the methodology and results of the surveys performed for Suffolk County of school bus drivers and members of volunteer fire departments which are discussed and relied upon by Drs. Erikson and Johnson.

C. Why were those surveys conducted?

A. As Contention 25 states, in the event of an accident at the Shoreham plant, those people who are expected to play a role in imple.enting an emergency response plan are likely to be torn between two conflicting roles. On the one hand, an individual has an obligation to his or her family during an emergency; on the other hand, emergency personnel also have an obligation to perform their specified duties during an emergen-cy. It is unrealistic to assume that all people who are sup-posed to play a role in an emergency plan will actually show up promptly for duty when the emergency occurs.

I was asked'by Suffolk County to investigate this topic by conducting studies to estimate the proportion of school bus i

drivers and volunteer firemen Who could be counted on to report quickly to perform emergency duties. Social Data Analysts, Inc. conducted two surveys which produced data as to how offsite personnel; including some upon whom the LILCO Plan l

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accident at Shoreham. The results suggest that large numbers 2

of emergency personnel will experience role conflict which will

make them unwilling to report for emergency duty until after ,

they have attended to the safety of themselves and their families.

Q. Please describe how the school bus driver survey was conducted.

A. That survey was conducted among school bus drivers who at the time (September, 1982) worked for several school districts located within a 10 mile radius of the Shoreham plant. The purpose of the survey was to find whether the bus drivers would a actually report to work and drive their buses to help in the evacuation of school children in case of a nuclear emergency, or whether they would first go to look after their own families.

The subjects of the survey were drivers employed by the Riverhead Central School District; which operates its own bus system and also serves several other school systems in the area, the Soaman. Bus Company; which serves the Shoreham-Wading l

River School District, and the Suburbia Bus Company. These i

! three companies serve the following school districts: the I

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Eastport Union Free School District, the Middle Island Central School District, the Riverhead Central School District, the Shoreham-Wading River School District, and the South Manor Union Free School District of Brookhaven.

All the data were obtained on September 7, 1982 at preschool orientation meetings held for the bus drivers. A representative of Social Data Analysts attended each of the

meetings and administered the questionnaire to all the bus drivers who were in attendance. We completed a total of 246 interviews with school bus drivers. We completed interviews i

with 21 drivers for the Eastport Union Free School District, 111 drivers for the Middle Island Central School District, 62 drivers for the Riverhead Central School District, 30 drivers for the Shoreham Wading-River School District, 13 drivers for the South Manor Union Free School District of Brookhaven, and 9 drivers who drove either for other districts or for a combina-tion of the above mentioned districts. -

Q. What is the significance of the number of bus drivers

, interviewed?

I A. Although some school bus drivers may have been absent from l the orientation meetings, and a small number may not have i

filled out the questionnaire, the survey data we obtained i

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represent the opinions of virtually all the bus drivers for the five school districts covered in the survey. The statistics we compiled on how many bus drivers completed the questionnaire in each of the three locations corresponded closely with the number of bus drivers we were told by the managers of the bus company would be in attendance at the meetings. Since virtu-ally all the bus drivers completed the questionnaire, we in fact surveyed the population of bus drivers for these five school districts, rather than a sample of the population. We, therefore, do not have to be concerned with whether the statistics generated by this study of school bus drivers are representative of the population of school bus drivers.

Q. Please describe the questionnaire'used in the school bus driver survey.

A. The questionnaire used in this study was prepared by me in consultation with Dr. Kai T. Erikson, Professor of Sociology at Yale Univeristy and Dr. James H. Johnson, Jr., Assistant Professor of Geography at UCLA. We pretested the questionnaire with nine school bus drivers who worked for either the Seaman Bus Company or the Riverhead Central School District. These nine were not asked to complete the final questionnaire. The pretest resulted in several changes in the questionnaire to make it more intelligible to typical school bus drivers. A copy of the questionnaire used in conducting this survey is At-tachment 1 hereto.

O. What was done with the questionnaires after they were distributed to the school bus drivers?

A. After the questionnaires were filled out by the school bus i

drivers, they were checked by a research assistant to make sure I

that they had been filled out correctly. The data were then' entered onto the computer and after having been checked for errors, were analyzed using a standard statistical program.

Q. Please describe the results of the school bus driver survey.

A. The questionnaire asked, among others, the following question:

Assuming that the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant is licensed and begins to operate, we are interested in knowing what you think you would do if there was an accident at the plant. Suppose that you had completed your morning run and there was an accident at' Shoreham. Everyone living within ten miles of the plant was advised to evacuate. School bus drivers were expected to help evacuate school children. What do you think you would do first?

First, I would report to work so that I could pick up school children in the evacuation zone and drive them to a shelter.

First, I would make sure that my family was safely out of the evacuation zone.

First, I would leave the evacuation zone to make sure that I was in a safe place.

First, I would do something else (SPECIFY) .

Don' t know The answers to this question indicate that in the event of a radiological emergency at the Shoreham plant, a substantial majority of school bus drivers would first look after the health and safety of their families rather than report to drive a school bus. Of those interviewed, 69 percent said that if there was an accident requiring the evacuation of people within a 10 mile zone of the plant, they would first make sure that their families were safely out of the evacuation zone; an addi-tional 4 percent volunteered that they would first check on their families and then go to drive the school bus; 24 percent said they would report to work so that they could pick up school children in the evacuation zone and drive them to a shelter; 3 percent said that they would immediately leave the evacuation zone.

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Eighty-six percent of the school bus drivers agreed with the statement: "In the event of a nuclear emergency at Shoreham, it would be the obligation of everyone to first look after the health and safety of their own family." Only 8 percent disagreed, and 6 percent had no opinion. Only 12 percent agreed with the statement: "In the event of a nuclear emergency at Shoreham, a school bus driver must place duty to drive the school bus over duty to family." Sev enty-four percent disagreed, and 14 percent had no opinion. These results are shown in Table 1, which is Attachnent 2 hereto.

O. How accurate do you think the survey data are in predicting the actual behavior of school bus drivers in an emergency at Shoreham?

A. In general, surveys provide useful information on how peo-ple will behave in an emergency. (For a more detailed discus-sion of this point see my testimony on Contention 23.) The actual behavior of any particular bus driver in an actual emer-gency would, of course, be influenced by the specific conditions existing at the time. For this reason, we use this survey not to predict what particular drivers will do or the exact proportion of drivers who will resolve role conflict by looking after the needs of their families, but rather to l

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4 estimate the approximate extent to which role conflict will present a problem in implementing the LILCO Plan. In addition, however, in evaluating the extent to which the survey we conducted accurately predicts the behavior of school bus driv-ers in a real emergency, we must consider that, although anonymous, the questionnaires were filled out in a work setting at which the bus drivers' supervisors were present. Interviews with some bus drivers after completion of the questionnaire in-dicated that they were apprehensive about saying that they would not report to drive the bus. Several expressed fear that if it became known that they would not report to work during an emergency, they would lose their jobs.

Given this setting which emphasized the importance of work and the fear that some drivers may have felt about saying that they would not report for work during a radiological emergency, it is possible that the_results obtained from this survey underestimat'e'the proportion of bus drivers who would look after the needs of their family rather than report to drive a school bus during a radiological emergency. At any rate, I feel confident that the survey did not overestimate the potential for role conflict.

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Q. Please describe how the volunteer firemen survey was conducted.

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< A. Members of the following volunteer fire departments which serve areas within approximately 10 miles of Shoreham were surveyed: Ridge Volunteer Fire Department, Miller Place Volun-teer Fire Depa r tment , Sound Beach Volunteer Fire Department, Rocky Point Fire Department, and Riverhead Fire Department.

There were 83 members of the Ridge Department, 144 members of the Riverhead Department, 60 members of the Sound Beach Department, 110 members of the Rocky Point Department, and 70 members of the Miller Place Department.

i The interviewing for this survey was conducted on the telephone. It was not possible to reach all of the 467 members of the five fire departments, although an attempt was made to reach all of them. We were able to complete interviews with 291 firemen, or 62 percent of all the firemen in the five departments. Since the procedure used in this survey is not based upon sampling, but represents an attempt to interview an entire population, sampling statistics estimating the sampling error would not be appropriate. It is possible, although there

is no evident reason why it should be so, that those firemen whom we were not able to contact on the telephone may have s

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