ML20237L514
| ML20237L514 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Shoreham File:Long Island Lighting Company icon.png |
| Issue date: | 04/27/1987 |
| From: | AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED |
| To: | |
| References | |
| OL-5-A-006, OL-5-A-6, NUDOCS 8708280134 | |
| Download: ML20237L514 (44) | |
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%g Focus Group #2 2/7/87 All
'87 AUG 20 P3 :42 l
You ate at home on a weekday morning at around 7 a.m. in the(morning and you up wake up, you turn your radio on and you hear these messages.
And then we are l
going to discuss what you think about them. What your reaction would be to them 1
f and we are going to go through a series of these messages. Why don't we begin l
by playing the first message.
This is not a test, assume that it is a real situation and that you hear this message on the radio announcing that something has happened at Shoreham.
EBS #1 is played.
M What did the message say?
S This is an advisement to give you an idea that there was a nuclear problem and the possibility exists of a larger problem.
1 S
It tended to scare you and it really didn't say anything.
It didn't say that it l
wa s imminent and anything was going to happen. You don't really know what is I
going on and what is going to happen.
S It told me that the bureaucrats had no way of handling it and that they we re putting this on because they had to.
M How would you feel when you heard this message?
S I would feel damned angry.
I would grab my two kids who had not yat gotten to school, gone to pick up my third child and gotten off the Island as fast as I c ould.
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S Do you feel that this message was clear?
S No, I f eel that this message was lousy.
S I feel that it was evasive.
I believe that because they put it on the air that there was definitely something wrong. We are in imminent danger and it l
would scare me.
Just because they are saying it is not necessarily a dangerous situation, but one is about to occur.
1 M How clear would you say that this message was as far as what it told you to do?
S It wouldn't tell me that this was a dangerous situation because it doesn't want 1
to cause a panic with the people.
But it still would panic the people.
S I think the words are vague but also enigmatic. There seems to be a mystery that they are creating that only leads to more apprehension.
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M So when you heard this, you would feel that it was very mysterious?
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S Yes.
I S I got a feeling of a panic that I would have to hurry up and get my phone book and check the maps and make sure I had all the information.
S I would question what it would mean to ne because I don't live in ene 10 mile zone.
Does this mean that this thing is about to blow and I better get out of there too or is this just a very localized matter?
M How would you feel after you heard this message?
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S I don't think the message really said anything.
It was kind of redundant in a lot of ways, they kept saying the same thing and the way it was read, I didn' t seem to feel any sense of urgency.
It sounded kind of flat.
M Would you be worried when you heard it?
S I would be annoyed more than anything else.
Like what is going on here and when are we going to find out?
S My reaction would be similar to the other woman who said she would go get her kids and get out because if we were notified later that there was a real mishap then it would be too late. Then the roads would get instantly clogged and I think I would leave at the first warning.
S This is 7 o' clock in the morning, are your children likely to be in school at 7 a.m.
S Yos, mine is.
S Of course, it enters your mind that if something really bad did happen, they wouldn't want to panic the people so right away you think. of Chernobyl.
They didn't want to tell anybody what happened there.
They don't tell you right away.
S In reference to that, I think that if there was a definite problem they would have told the people in the 10 mile radius to try and get into some safe area.
Even though there is a rush hour it would be foolish to jeopardize their integrity, the lives or well being of rhe, people in that area. That would oe totally out of hand for them to do.
R s
. S Just the fact that they put it on the radio means that there is a danger.
Any problem at that point is a danger automatically.
S Was there anything that preceded this, like a siren or something like that?
M Sirens went of f in the 10 mile zone.
l M How many people here live inside the 10 mile zonc?
S Within a hair's breath.
S On one side, I don't think there is any such thing as an orderly panic.
They t ry and avoid. Also I don't care what is transmitted on the airwaves there is j
always a doubt of trust.
Can we really believe what they are saying?
I would seriously question that if I lived one block away from Main Street in Port Jefferson that I wouldn't be affected by radiation.
S It seems to me we have all grown quite immune, calloused to the warnings, the civil service wa rnings, this is just a test.
When it comes onto the radio or TV most of us turn it off.
We just don't hear it anymore.
This did not stir j
anybody to move or take action. This message was a sleeping pill.
I S I live outside the limits, I think there is only one of us who lives within 10, but I felt that the message was pretty vague and it wouldn't really make you want to do anything.
But I think the news media all over the country would be on this like a shot.
So I would leave the cable channel o.n and look around.
M How much would you trust LILCO to tel) yon the truth about what was happening at l
i Sho reham?
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- S Not at all.
S Yeah.
I trust a fellow worker.
I just do, I have f aith in the f ellow worker in Ame ric a.
S I t rus t them, they live here too.
How are they going to get out, how are their j
kids going to get out.
Even if they are not within the 10 mile zone, it is not a game, they are not walking around in a bubble either.
S I may not trust them but I would trust the message conveyed over the radio j
because I do not believe it totally comes from just them.
The regulatory commission would have a strong hand to play in anything that was related to the public.
S I tend to distrust the management more than I do the workers. There are certain pressures put on the management by the Nuclear Commissions and I think they are reluctant to cause a panic so I would tend to mistrust them.
j S
I would tend to nistrust, not everybody connected with LILCO but I wouldn' t just give a blanke t trust to the workers because there has been too much shoddy workmanship there.
I think on too many occasions regarding shoddy workmanship, the management has been less than upright with us so I think there is enough of a doubt in their credibility.
Perhaps under my own personal panic, radioactivity is going to start coming out of the plant if it hasn't already.
If I thought Hauppauge was safe, I personally would probably stop by the County Executive's.0f fice and trash the place on my way out.
You and the other people i
_--_-_________--_-a
. let this happened.
If one of my kids dies because of this, I am going to find you and I am going to nail you to the wall.
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S I would tend to doubt the announcement because maybe things are more serious i
chan they would want you to believe.
I think they would take their time in l
making a serious announcement.
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1 S I am involved with writing for a publishing house that is involved with a number
. of newspapers and the first reaction is always to downplay everything.
And then as the story progresses, you can put in an update on what is occurring.
So myself if I heard this, my first reaction would be that it is a lot worse than what they are sayin:t, S I would try to get my children away and I wouldn't come back for at least a year.
I would Jeave.
Bu t the thing f.3 how do you get of f the Island?
l S I am a lifelong resident of the area, supposing it were a nuclear plant on the coast of Connecticut. Then what.
Nuclear power is a thing that is going to be around for a long time.
I think that the government is remiss in handling these s i tua tio ns.
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S I would get my f amily and children around me and put on every news media that I could.
Unfortunately, there are a number of people on Long Island who cannot go anywhere.
S I would try to make some phone calls to try to find out exactly what was hap pe ning.
Then call up other people to see what their reaction was because I l
_7 f eel I would be conf used to know exactly where I could go, whether there were any shelters around that I could go to.
S I would leave.
Absolutely.
S I would take my children and leave.
S I would stay but prepare an emergency pack for each of the members of the f amily if we had to evacuate.
S I would be afraid to leave because of all the panic.
I would be afraid that people would be getting killed on the way out.
Traffic jams, car accidents.
I would hope that somebody would direct in the proper way to handle this.
Go into the basement. Maybe we should start building those radiation things we had back in the 50s.
Shelters.
Stacking up dry beans and things like that.
i S Just until the hubbub of people were out of the way and then you could evacuate.
S I don't live in the 10 mile zone and from what the announcement said, I would sit tight and I wouldn't want to add on to the panic.
I don't think it is the
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hypothetical question of what LILCO would do, nuclear power is working already.
You have Indian Point if that thing blows and you. have westerly winds, then everybody is going to go east to go swimming. How is anybody going to get off of Long Island? You cannot get into New York City in the rush hour.
I mean 7 a.m. in the morning, if everybody states getting out into their cars, you are i
going to have craf fic jams on side streets.
You will never get out.
I t hink instead of tugging back and forth on whether Shoreham should run a nuclear power i
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plant, I think you should tell them you have some hardware there, turn it into a coal fired f acility, charge it of f to your shareholders, they made a lousy i nve s tme nt.
And end it already.
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M But if the plant were turned on and you heard this announcement, would you just l
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sit?
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S Yes.
i S If I heard the message I would stay and try to get more information on dif ferent channels, cable channels, or Connecticut stations, because everybody is going to be covering a nuclear accident.
l S My inclination would be to leave but where would you go? You have to look at the weather reports, and go in the direction the winds are not going.
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Obviously, one cannot go 'oecause there is no place to go.
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I would stay, gather my children together, prepare what I would consider a i
I survival pack and keep my radio tuned and be ready to evacuate and I do not live I
within the 10 miles.
I would perhaps steal someone's boat right at the end of i
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my block.
l S Now that I hear that some people are staying, I would definitely leave.
One of the vehicles that I have is a motorcycle and I would use that.
You would be l
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able to manipulate it more through the roads.
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Being outside the 10 mile zone, I would stay.
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. S I would want to leave but I think I would fear the pr.nic of everyone leaving so I would probably stay.
I would probably go to the drugstore and get some batteries of things, fill my S
gas tank, get in my car, go back home and watch TV.
Just keep an eye on things,
trying to be realistic about it.
S I think if anything does happen, then it would be impossible given the road situations and traf fic jams it would impossible to get out.
You would be stuck l
in traf fic with clouds of radioactive steam and I would go into the 10 mile zone to get my son from school. Go by the County Executive's Of fice.
If something happened, I would hope that my children could come back someday.
S I accepted that message purely as an alert.
I didn't read it that there was l
anything imminent in it.
In Business News and World Repo rts, I saw a map about 1
172 nuclear reactor installations; they are all over and our country is by no means the leader in that field.
So I wouldn't know where to go.
I do think we need an abundance of the lowest possible cost energy that there is.
I think I would have the faith that there would be safeguards suf ficient and a unified plan of alerts worldwide so you know what it meant.
Everybody in the world 1
would know what #1 alert, #2, #3 meant and governmentally administrated plan of l
survival.
That is where I stand.
I haven't been to a nuclear meeting in 10 l
years, so this is more of an information session for me than anything else.
S I think I would gather my loved ones and try and last it out in the basement.
I wouldn't try going to the stores for batteries, candles or food because you are 4
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You better have it in the house already and just going to get stuck out there.
be ready.
4 I would get j
I would definitely go for my child who attends an early session.
S the hell her and still try with all the panic that would be occurring, to get off of the Island.
S You are not going to make it.
You are not going to make it by staying with the radiation either.
nuclear power is the thing of the future and I believe it will S I~believe that improve in time.
But right now, we are scared.
I don't believe I would leave s
Just wait the house because everybody is leaving and nobody knows where to go.
and see what happens.
S I ould stay, I vauldn't panic at all.
S I would have some misgivings, but I would try to give LILCO the benefit of the And I would stay and try to be cool and d oubt. Try to believe that message.
There is no way you can plan for a situation like make some preparations.
this--there are just too many variables, so you would have to improvise.
the time.
You cannot evacuate S I would have to see how things were happening at 1
without mass panic.
let's assume you are still at home and a short while later, you hear the next M
message come over the radio.
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e Play ERB #2 M What did this message say about the safety system at the nuclear power plant?
S It is failing.
S It has failed.
i S There is a small leak at the moment which in time will create a larger leak and l
it is going to get worse.
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M What else did it say?
i S It is sort of confusing; at one point, he said-that there was a minor leak and then a few moments later, he said that there was no leak.
And then he said that there was a leak.
That was a bit of a confusing message.
M Did it say anything else?
J S Hilk-producing animals have to be put away and store their feed inside the barn.
S That means that everything is going to be contaminated.
I S
I t hit ' it also says that we all have to sit on the edge of our seats waiting
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f or this to happen at all times. With our little shelter in our basement, and our feed protected f rom the radioactive debris.
Be prepared. Not only do you have to worry about the Russians or anything else, new yvu have to worry about I
the power company 20 miles down the road.
M How much danger would you feel that you were in when you heard this message?
_12 S I would feel in great danger.
S I f eel that if I didn't die in the next six months, I would definitely die of it in the next five years.
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When you heard this message you would really feel that you were in a very unsafe M
c ondi tion?
S Oh yes.
S A point was brought out about a plant being run in Westchester County.
- Fine, But the fact of who is to say which way the wind is blowing and where to go.
the matter is there is no way to go.
No practical way to go.
S I would still say sit tight, monitor what is going on, there is a possibility f rom the statement that the controls could f ail and I think that I would trust their information as being extra cautious at this point.
They are warning you and possibly that they are not as far out of control as people would imagine.
S This is a lot stronger message chan the first one that came e2t.
This is definitely an event; I would be more moved to try and get out for fear of what j
is going to happen next when they say that other system f ailures could go.
The thing that I wonder about is even if you are able to get out, you have lost eve ryt hing. You cannot go back to a radioactive house.
They just ruined your life.
S You have yourself and your f amily.
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S True, but on a larger scale, even'if you can phyareally get of f of Long Island l
where are you going to go after that.
They have cut your legs out from, under you.
Even if you are still living and breathing. And that is not to say that the wind is going to blow that radioactivity;r following you.
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S One of my worries would be that perhaps I had already lost my life and just didn' t know it.
There is a certain tice delay between this release of radiation by the time all consultations were made and got out to all the radio stations, I i
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may have already been exposed to radioactivity. We may in f act be walking ' dead l
already.
I just don't know.
S Is our need for electricity so great, that we actually have to live. in f ear of l
our lives? That we have te have a shelter in the basement to worry about getting of f the Island?
i S Ye s. Unless you want to go' hick to candles.
S This country is spoiled.
S If you have f aith in America and f aith in technology that there has te be a l
better way of producing electricity than nuclear fission.
I think that is l
unplanned and if you look at all the things involved in it, that getting rid of 1
l the vaste alone is impossible.
There are no container systems that will hold it j
for more than 50-60 years with a half life of how many thousands of ysats in radioactivity? I think we tan do better in developing powe r.
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S We have in hydroelectric power.
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- and e teresting question as to how we should produce M It is a very important n
electricity, but what I want to focus on particularly this morning is if they turr. that plant on, we want to know if there is some type of incident at that plant such as these messages, we want to know how you as Long Island residents would feel then?
S I really am not aware of how many places there are nuclear power plants in the U.S.
I would really try to get out of here soon.
Sell my house and leave and go to another place.
S I came to this forum today to understand and clarif y my own ideas so I will be graduating from Stony Brook in a few months and I have the opportunity of moving if I choose. Listening to the f ear that this is building inside myself, I may take that op po rtunity.
And I feel that if I should delay it and listen to a radio program like that I would be so angry at myself that I didn't take advantage when I had the opportunity to get out.
S I think today that we don't live in any area that is isolated f rom others, and we don't have buffer zones. We may be injured by a nuclear power plant in Wisconsin or Ohio, and to just base a decision on whether we live near LILCO or not may not be the wisest thing to do.
I have to agree with this gentlemen that when I heard the second ceport, I would already believe that I was effected by it and I am never going to outrun the winds that will take this radiation away.
M What did the message tell people who live outside of the 10 mile zone?
S No t hing.
. M Did you believe LILCO that if you were outside that zone that you weren't in any danger?
S No.
S Absolutely not.
S They have no way of predicting when and how the wind is going to move. You cannot control mother nature. The radion,ctivity will ef fect us.
I don't care how technologically astute they are, they have no way of knowing how things are going to blow.
S Do the rest of you feel similar?
S I think that the 10 mile zone was more or less an arbitrary decision on the part of the planners. There is no wall that is going to stop radioactivity at 10 miles, or 100 miles.
M How would you feel if you turned on the TV and you heard some engineers f rom LILCO being interviewed and they said there was no danger to you from what was happening at Sho reharn?
S If they were standing at Shoreham saying that?
S They would get out very f ast.
As soon as some incident happens at that plant, somebody knows exactly what is going on.
S I would expect at that point that there would be an Atomic Eaergy Commission spokespersons on site at all times. That they don't leave it in the hands of management.
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. 1 M What if you heard the media interviewing all dif ferent kinds of scientists, or engineers, some of them LILCO who said not to worry and some other scientists, said you had a very serious, volatile condition here.
How would you feel?
S I would feel that I better find out some of ficial information on the subject because interviews on TV or the media I don't take much stock in them.
S I am not f or this powe r plant, but the management if they worked in the higher echelons would understand more about nuclear power than I do and if they were in that type of a field, they must enjoy it and they probably believe to a certain l
degree in what they are doing and they would be more optimistic than I would be a bout this.
M So would you believe them.
1 S
I wouldn't necessarily believe ches but that is their opinion.
S Even if I saw an engineer, I think there is something -like company mentality and i
if they were being interviewed right on the site, these people would have been selected for this interview.
I am sure they even have this already planned.
Regardless things could be blowing up all around them and they could be convinced that it isn't a serious situation.
I wouldn't hold any stock in what I
they say.
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l S I would take that time to prepare for evacuation.
I would think of Three Mile Island all over again.
I would hope the NRC would be in charge.
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S I think what you are asking here is what people would do af ter they heard these l
messages. The problem is tnee. that is locking the barn door af ter the herse is j
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- already gone.
Some of you may recall in your early elementary school years hiding under the desks in shelter drills.
That was given up because it became a moot situation that is no longer usef ul for our children.
What we should be considering now is prevention of having to hear that message.
This whole thing is too late.
S I don't have much f aith in experts.
To me, there is no such animal.
Bu t I
because these engineers have a lot more training than I have, I would tend to put some credence in what they say.
Maybe 60-40.
S If they were on site I would have f aith in whatever ths/ are saying.
S What is to stop LILC0 f rom interviewing an engineer long before ar, accident occurs, and playing it later on.
S Ah, ha.
S One thing that has come to my mind is that I think the fact th:t so much publicity has talked about evacuation, my concern is that if any serious accident happens at that plant I might just have to jump in the car and leave
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and never come back. And this university all these homes is just going to ei.
here for who knows how long and neue of us is going to be able to come back.
I personally don't want to have to be run out of here forever.
As long as they f ocus simply on evacuation; they are not focussing on what would happen af ter that.
I think there are a lot of levels of nuclear accident that mean you might never be able to come back.
I just don't want to say goodbye to this place.
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' M Was this last message a cleas one or unclear?
S Less clear.
S I think it sounded more like a worry.
Each time I hear a message coming in, I t end to believe it more.
S I would get more frightened about the next me s sag e.
If they cannot even agree and they are all experts, what am I to think.
S This would be af ter we have some fallout then I would gather my children and l eave.
I would just take a boat and get away.
I would look to the scientific community to tell the truth because hopef ully that is what they believe in helping ma nkind.
S There may be a nasty fight for those boats.
S When they say to take care of the f armer, if I were a f armer I wouldn't care about my animals, I am more worried about the people and myself.
S If you had storage feed, how long is it going to 'last and ultimately those animals are going to 1. ave to go out there, it is already too late.
S I don't agree with that at all.
If you have the animals you have to put them away because they are milk producing animals and there is the possibility that this thing isn't going to go any further.
You have to look at both sides of the point.
That is your income and that is what feeds the population.
Down South, during the drought, and they shipped all that hay for months down there to feed
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those animals.
Thousands of animali.
And we could do the same thing here.
You d on' t know how bad it is.
$ We get most of our ailk from upstate.
S There was a recent thing about We s t Ge rma ns not allowing the importation of f eeds from the area around Chernobyl.
S Chernobyl is a whole dif ferent kind of thing.
People don't realize the difference between one reactor and another. Whereas the reactors that are i
designed with lots of safeguards here are not in the league of Chernobyl.
The breeder reactors have more chance of breakdown.
1 think that people's education i
in this area is lacking considerably.
If the government should concentrate a little more on what the statistics and what kind of reality there is and what kind of afeguards that they have, maybe the public's ability to comprehend it would be more so than people give them credit for.
M You are at home, or in your car, ar.3 you hear the next message.
Play EBS #3 s
M What did this message tell people to do?
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S This message essentially to me said the same thing thtt the second message said,
however, the second message contradicted itself in the middle there lika this l
man brought up when it said that there hadn't been a release. This one was just I
more explicit that there had been a minor release, that something else could fail and it was much more direct.
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. S The same thing. This one was directed, it didn't keep wavering back and forth, l
i maybe there was, maybe there wasn't.
M Did it say anything else?
S It didn't say anything else but it was reassuring.
It was status quo from the last time.
I M
So, you would feel better?
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S Well, I would feel that there is no more time left.
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S Now there is a chance of a major one going out now.
M Why do you feel that way?
l S Because that is what he said.
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M What did he say?
1 S If there is any change we vill inform you or we will change the information..or l
the message.
1 S He said what on the first one, too.
l S Well you can look at it one or two ways:
you can say that things are getting any worse, that they are not deteriorating. And on the other side, you could i
say well they are unable to stop or control what is happening.
Se that message wouldn't have any impact on me at all.
The way I reacted to the second message 1
l I would feel that nothirg has changed.
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. is S There was Sne phrase that mounded particularly ominous in which he said it That implies that necessary that :.
golic take any action at this time.
not they are about to tell us to do something.
M What e'ise did they tell you to do? Did they tell you to look for anything?
S You have to hold onts your telephone book, if you threw it away, you are in t rouble.
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They keep referring back to this brochure which by this time if I was giving S
I this message, I wouldn't go looking for a paper or look in my phone book.
don't care if I live ten miles or less, I just wouldn' t go looking for a It is downplaying it by trying to make you feel better.
b rochure.
S I think that is what is wrong with it is that there is really no conclusive I
s tatement being said, they say go to your brochures, go to your phone book.
i think most people are going to do that and that in itself is going to I
d on' t create problems.
Again, I don't even know if people within a ten mile zone are l
supposed to leave, or are supposed to stay there.
M What did they say about that? Did they tell anybody ta leave?
They just said ref er to your brochure and I don't know if the brochure tells you S
to leave.
Does the lady over there who lives within a ten mile radius, do you have a 5
1 brochure?
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. S No.
S Did you ever get a brochure?
S No.
this meeting essentially for people outside the ten mile radius?
S Vasn't M Prima rily.
S I have a couple of concerns about the message itself. One is that they don't I
give you specific instructions, they just refer you to other places to find out what to do and figure out what applies to you. They talk about this local response organization and I would have serious doubts whether all these people are out there, doing what they are supposed to be doing, or are they finding l
their own f amilies and leaving. And also my thought is that this is a message you said was prepared by LILCO, this message and broadcast from the emergency, is more concerned with a very bureaucratic, soothing way for good PR to allow The them to open the plant now and may not bear any relat. ion to reality later.
I think are just on for their own PR.
emergency messages they broadcast now, They say everything is going to be just fine, and you don't have anything to wo rry about.
That is not a real message.
1 if they did play that message, would you believe them?
M But I just overheard someone say I couldn't afford to leave, but how could you S
afford to stay? You would stay for material possessions but if you are dead,
they are no good anyway.
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. S If you are going to leave, you have to leave right from square one.
S I am surprised that I am not hearing a lot of the people comment on is that the j
second [ inaudible] to take local testing and that I would think would f
instill the next step more frantieness, if you will, in people in the area.
I I
am surprised no one has mentioned that.
To me I would think that if I was that guy taking that test, I wouldn't even go in and do it if I thought there was any d amag e.
Bu t other people maybe wouldn't havs that optimistic viewpoint to think God this is it, now it really has to be bad because they at going to see how much has leaked out.
I was just surprised that nobody made any comment on that.
S I am sure the NRC would be on top of that.
I have a lot of faith in that.
I am sure they would monitor outside the ten mile limit, check areas to see if there
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i was nuclear f allout outside the area.
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S You are assuming that they notified them.
S Every nuclear plant has NRC representatives there.
S But as soon as the slightest thing happens to that plant, there is a danger to start with.
Thr ee Mile Island has the same kind of notice s on the radio.
S But you could ce driving your car and something could happen also.
More people get killed driving their cars than anything else in this country.
S You take these f actories that are filled with propane.
S If a lot of the people who were getting panicky and let's flee attitude, if there are a lot of f anatical people around you are going to get into a traffic l
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situation and guns are going to come out.
If you have a four wheel drive and you can get over the hill, and they cannot in their Volkswagen, that is another whole set of problema.
The messages are designed to get the public to slowly start bleeding out of the area but the few f anatics are going to go first and as the messages get a little more severe, the others will follow and the traf fic situation vill not take it.
There is a lot more to it than the radiation, the traf fic will be a problem too.
S We are not talking about a 10 megaton nuclear explosion.
We are talking about a l
low level leak.
f S Do you have a copy of the brochure? I am interested in knowing because in that b rochure, they say if you live in this area within 10 milns you should leave.
They are not going to say that over the radio, because then everybody will leave.
M They have zones, they have a map which shows which zone you are in.
M Now let's listen to the next message.
Play EBS#5 M They are now saying virtually everybody in the zone should evacuate.
So what I
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would this mean to you?
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S Now they are expanding the area.
Now they are really telling us vnat to take along. We are in trouble.
" S I would feel that the situation is probably going to got worse and worse and I would leave. How much gas is in the gas tank and how f ar is'it going to go.
l S I would probably have left.
Everybody is going to be going west.
M You wouldn't believe the message when they said you were safe outside the zone?
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No.
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S Fi rs t they said there was a leak at one time and then they are saying there is a leak at such and such a time.
I would think there was another leak and I would I
get out because they say only within a ten mile radius.
But who knows, how f ar l
it would go.
There is as much danger of me getting it outside of the ten mile
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zone and I would try to get out as soon as possible.
I wouldn't believe them.
First they said a minor leak and now it is a general leak.
S I would have left at the first announcement.
I have done research on Three Mile Island and exactly the same thing happened. Each step that they tell you, they
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l are already on the next one.
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M As soon as you heard the first, you would be suspicious?
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i S Absolutely, because it is already more of an emergen::y than they have told you.
l M If LILCO people said don't worry would you believe them?
S Wo r ry.
Not in the least.
S I we,uldn't be around to listen. By this time, I would have already gone.
In a real situation, people are going to come around and knock on your door and say Come on now:
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. 1 S All these drivers for these busses.
Come on.
It is like some science fiction film.
S The police department wculd be quite involved.
I am sure they would be.
My mind would progress beyond that point.
I S There is no such thing as they have to.
Since they finally did say evacuate, I would have to lesve.
I am almost 30 mil e s away, it is 9:33 in the morning and rush hour traf fic is over.
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l S You have all the people panicking. Where are yor,;oing to Northern State
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Parkway or the Expressway?
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S I would try to leave in any event.
I am in much more danger than I was before.
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And it is a better time '1 day.
l S You will never make it.
l S If this thing ever doea go on line, they should prepare better messages than the i
ones we have heard today.
That is jibberish. Zone A to Zone P and Q and M.
Why don't they just say if you live in Sho reham, Wading Rive r, Cutchogue, wha t eve r i t is, ge t out.
Ref erring people back to manuals in the middle of a nuclear event, is stupid.
And if there are public authorities that are supposed 1
to oversee this, they don't deserve the jobs, if this is what we are going to be hearing.
M Do you think these messages have been very confusing?
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5 It is nothing.
Broad cas t stations have a bigger responsibility than that to put the information on the air.
Just because they have an emergency broadcast system, they cannot start giving you coded messages like this.
That is ridulous.
M You don't thick these messages would reassure anybody?
S Reassure. I would feel so powerless, I would feel like I was in an airplane at 50,000 feet with two engines out and 2V2 million fellow passengers.
We are going l
to crash.
That doesn't say anything.
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S I am a pilot and I have a plane at MacArthur Airport.
By this time, I would be on the motorcycle heading toward the airport.
S It is definitely much more alarming. As to believability, I think that someone living outside that immediate zone would certainly know that it is time to pack i
up and go if you haven't already gone.
S I would think that people living within that radius would not think of their i
f ellowman but of their own.
S I would leave at that first announcement but more and more I think that are just so many uncontrollable variables for me as an individual--whether they are underplaying the situation initially or exaggerating it--or whether 1 am getting i
accurate information, I would not take any kind of chance and just leave at the first announ c eme nt.
S I would trust the announcements of what they say.
I would want to leave, however, the practicality of getting out.
. S I think the an..ouncements were handled properly as f ar as they cannot come out on the first annouc ement and say to evacuate everyone within ten miles of the plant.
What they try and do is they try and relieve the situation so certain people A through D can get out.
I really don't think they could just announce get out.
I also believe that at this point, if you are still there you are going to have to remain where you are.
If you are on Southern State Parkway, you will have to remain there.
You don't have an option to the fourth announcement at all.
How you reacted to the first, is how you will react to two, three or four.
Als o, o little bit of anger came in because I didn't know what was going on and what the people within those ten miles were being told.
Because I am 14 miles away, I am kept in the dark of this whole thing.
The fact that I know I don't have a brochure, what are they going to tell us now?
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M So you would feel that they we ren' t giving you the proper info rmation?
S I think that the 10 miles were selected simply because it is not the most l
densely populated area and I don't think you have to be a genius to say radiation only goes 10 miles and you are safe beyond 10 miles.
If they were 1
f orced to give an evacuation plan to some governmental agency, they could more l
l or less get the 10 miles because it is a sparsely populated area.
S I would be ready to go for sure.
S The timing on the ressage indicates that now it has been about 3V2 hours since this has started and they still haven't been able to control it which I think is incredibly ominous.
I think in the real world something like this unfolding, I
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. you could just open your windows and hear the panic going on.
I think all of Suf folk and Nassau Counties would turn into an incredibly violent disaster.
If we the voters and our elected of ficials let Shoreham go on line we are going to have to live everyday knowing that this could happen. And every time you hear a I
siren, you are going to have to turn on your radio and find out if that stren means that something is h<ppening, or is it just a local fire.
S I was the gu'y who wa sn' t,goi ng to run.
I am getting worried now.
I still thins evacuation is a viable alternative, I don't think there is anywhere to go.
Are you going to just keep on running.
Bu t I would be worried which way the wind wa s blowing.
I don't know what the damage control procedures are bot I do want to know just what type of warning information I am going to get and survival info rmation should be at my disposal before. You take Sweden, Denmark and J
Norway they have hydropower why did they build more kilowatts.
What are they doing to protect their people? -They do it the hard way, they don't have the GNP we have to be able to af ford these plants but they have gone ahead and done more t han we h ave. Why? I would like to find out.
S Like I said, I would like to have a shelter built in the basement and just stay there.
I have personally spoken with a bus driver hired by LILCO that pr e sen tly drives a school bus within the 10 mile area and she is being paid a certain sum every so many months for agreeing to be on duty and drive that bus.
To me she said all I am taking care of is my f amily.
So I wouldn't look for those bus d rive rs.
And as f ar as hopping in a boat, I asked a boating person about it.
The battery is out of that boat and the gas line is drained, so you bettet have another plan in mind in the winter season.
. 3 S The sad situation is that they are telling us too late.
If nuclear power is I
going to in fact be a fact on Long Island which it will be within the next year or so whether we like it or not, better precautions have to be take n or de can 1
just sit around and forget about it or follow our gut instincts at the time and I
i get out if that is what we are going to do.
S I think Long Island is going to be chaos.
I think they should educate the j
I people about the nuclear plant safety.
So the people could be, aware. At 7 a.m.
I in the morning everybody will run.
S I will still hang in right until the end.
S I think I would be on my way, I f ound this message a little more reassuring than the others in that it was more info rmative.
Is this project being f unded by LILCO?
M No.
i S I think obviously the situation has been escalating.
I think still it is pretty much an improvisational situation because it is really hard to say what you would do in this situation. You have to watch what other people are doing, how the traf fic is building up and you cannot really determine those things until they happen.
It is going to be a very chaotic situation.
M What would you do if you looked out the window and you saw that most of your neighbors were getting into their cars and leaving?
S I would have to see how the traf fic flowed.
It wouldn't make sense to get into a car and be stuck on the road in traf fic.
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. M You would rather risk any possible exposure to radiation then the traf fic?
S The point is I have children.
They would be in school. Your first concern will f
be with getting your children out.
All these things are ti'me cons uming.
And by l
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that time it is going to be such a chaotic situation.
You are talking about everybody piling into the streets at once.
It is ridulous, everyone is going to be killing each other.
S Two inches of snow and the traf fic drops down to 10 miles an hour on the p arkway s.
All the entrances are jammed and you will never get through.
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l S The first traf fic accident will block things.
One breakd own, f o rge t it.
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l S Just look at the panic level that exists if they announced that there is a l
l chance of an inch of snow.
People go to the supermarkets, they clean out the l
milk, b re ad, t he bu t t e r.
They say they might not get out for a few days. So
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this is a panic level with an inch of snow.
Just based on the geographic area here, I cannot possibly see on LI1CO's side how they would ever have an evacuation plan that would be f unctional. There isn't any way of getting out.
S Bu t we need cheap electric power here because the electric bills are getting a s tronomic al.
S I am saying as f ar as the plant goes, I don't see how they could devise a plan j
to curtail panic and where people could expect to go when you have a 10 mile Island.
You just cannot get out.
S 7 was attending a college in central Pennsylvania at the time TMI malf unctioned.
And I was about 80 miles west of Harrisburg whith is where TMI is located.
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of che stories I heard were of total chaos, contradictions by the news media.
Total disorganization on that part and that was a very lightly populated area in the middle of the boondocks and they were f reaking out there.
People were panicing where I was.
And as f ar as cheap electric power, I know right now that LILCO is going to be boosting up our bills even more because of Shoreham and because of the mistakes they have made there.
S Just on the issue of the electric powe r, you know they started building this plant around 1971, 1972.
They have been playing this game for a long time and they have been jacking up the rates along the way and we haven't gotten one spark of electricity out of it.
What we have to do it seems to me is that before this thing gets on line, find a way of telling these people you have got to turn this into something more environmentally safe.
Even if it is burning c o al. And we know that coal pollutes.
Bu t coal is not going to pollute the way nuclear is going to pollute.
And it if it is going to cost the shareholders money, let them pay for it.
Why do we have to pay for it?
l S Talk to someone with black inngs.
M Let's hear the next me s s ag e.
Play EBS #6 S
It said a significant amount of radiation was teleased, the last time it wa s a I
small amount of radiation.
It was a lot clearer.
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i S It is really cooking now.
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_33 M 1 am going to play the first part of the last message.
Play EBS #7 S Now I think it is pathetic.
Now you know there is going to be thyroid absorption from the radiation and you are going to worry about your children getting iodine.
I would have tried to get out in the beginning with my f amily.
3 I am not sure about the significance of the thyroid thing.
I think they should give it in plainer language.
M You didn't think the message was clear?
S No.
If what they were saying about the thyroid was horrendous, it seems to me that they would have issued some warning to people beyond the 10 miles.
I don't think that is a real problem to the average person.
I still wouldn' t get on that highway.
I would close the flue in the chimney and stay in the house.
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t wouldn't rush out into all that bedlam.
S You would take your life in your hand if you are anywhere near a road.
Fo rge t about traf fic guides.
S I would be very frightened at this point.
I would have been gone already.
They are telling the people to call this number.
Now if you are on this list fine, are you going to wait until your number comes up.
Where are you supposed to go?
l M What would you do if you called up a number and you had a question as to wnat you should do and then they said, we will call you back?
- S I would say goodbye, I am leaving.
S Of course not, I would say don't call me, I will call you.
If they put me on hold, I am going to stand there and wait!
And these people who are telling me to leave, they don't tell me where to go or how to go and there you are.
I am very f rightened at this point.
S First of all, they are assuming that everyone can read this brochure. Then they are also assuming everyone can hear and can see.
By this time there is no one in that reactor, they don't know what is going on in there, it is unpredictable.
I would have left the first time.
First of all, it s houl dn ' t be opened.
S If I was still around at that point, I would be gone.
And I wa sn ' t if I was on the road, I think it would be more merciful to die, having somebody shoot me because I would be dying a slow death anyway.
S I would still stay home.
I have a nuclear chemical gasmask and I would probably don that.
S It would be nice to just close the windows and the fireplace damper and just stay there for awhile erd copa that some strong wind comes along and blows it over. Look at Che rnobyl.
It you walked outside for 1 minute would it be as bad as staying outside for 2 hrs. in the car.
M What do you think?
S No, I d on ' t think it would be as bad as 2 or 3 hours3.472222e-5 days <br />8.333333e-4 hours <br />4.960317e-6 weeks <br />1.1415e-6 months <br /> in a car.
I think at this point, I think I would just rather close the windows and stay put.
Close up that house and stay there.
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g S I think if I heard this announcement and I was still home, I would probably' stay
- j where I am but af ter having heard the progression of the way that these things go, I am more apt now to say that on the first one I would do my beat to clear out of my house and get to some kind of public sheltering arrangement that is set up because at the very least more likely when you are with a mass of other people to have medical care, food, and everything else.
Hearing that and if I was still at home, I would stay there.
But af ter hearing this package of a nnounc ements, I think at the first one I would clear out to where other people we re going to be.
There is going to be strength being with more people than sitting in your own house.
S This country is not making any preparations for anything like that.
You cannot go a fallout shelter like we did in the early 60s and the late 50s and expect to have water and food.
l S You might be right.
But I thought I heard in one of the earlier ones that there are designated places to go to.
M If LILCO made an announcement on the radio that said that everybody who had been within the 10 mile zone should go to some place within Nassau County and they named the place, to be checked for radioactive contamination what would you do t hen?
S I would sit home and die like the rest of us.
S What about the man who had a house in Pennsylvania tho had something under his house and he worked in the power plant and they found all this rediation on him
s entering the power planc, rather than leaving the power plant and he has been living with quite a bit of radiation for a number of years.
What I am saying is that there is a certain amount that you can accept.
S People don' t unders tand.
I don't know how many people have been in the military; I spent five years in the Marine Corps and they teach you nuclear biological wa rf are.
You can survive with nuclear dropout; you need a gas mask i
j and a suit to cover you up and af ter you get fallout on you, you wash yourself I
of f and you have to eat non-contaminated foods, which means in containers, non-contaminated water, which means sealed. You have to take certain precautions but you can survive.
S Providing you have that.
S Anybody with any kind of sense, you should be prepared.
I think most of us who have homes have a certain amount of excess food in the house that they can eat canned food. Extra rice, whatever. You make the best of it.
S If I heard this last message, hopef ully =y f amily and I would be 5,000 f eet over Connecticut.
If not, we would stay where we were.
S I would wish I was long gone at this point.
It would be impossible to get away n ow, a nd i t migh t be better to stay tight.
You certainly cannot drive anywhere.
That was clear with the second announcement.
S I would be glad to be on my boat.
l S If at this point I was home, I would have only semi-rational responses.
There 1
is nothing you can actually do.
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- S Again, I find the message is bad.- I don't like the thing about the thyroid; I don't know what they are talking about.
If I could get out, I would go.
S I would probably remain where I am.
S If I were still home at that point, I would definitely be in the basement.
I would stay indoors until the cloud passed.
l S The winds kind of shif t around.
I wouldn't wa nt to just bunker down in my 1
house. You would have to hold your breath for the next five months.
I guess I would want to reiterate what a lot of other people have said, it just seems to me that if Shoreham does go on line everybody is being put at tremendous risk.
l The plant has had problems of shoddy workmanship and mismanagement. We are all being put at terrible risk and if we have to evacuate, we will probably never be able to come bach safely.
All this and everything we have to live with for the sake of the profits for a relatively small amount of shareholders.
To me it is not right.
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S He is absolutely right. What about solar energy?
l S We need Shoreham, Shoreham is going to open and nothing is going to stop it from o pe ning.
S I haven't heard anyone question the authenticity of these tapes.
This mass communication skills, we are much more advanced than that now than a long time ago.
One f rom column A, one f rom column B, you can' t communicate with a mass audience in that way so I question the origin of the tapes.
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, i M You think these tapes are not very clear?
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5 Are they of ficial tapes?
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l M The messages were written by LILCO about a year ago.
S They can do a better job than that.
M You think these messages didn't do an adequete job of telling the people what was going on?
S Precisely.
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S Well, if you hadn' t left and you still hear on this last message, you are home and you are staying home because that is the only logical thing to do, how many here have airtight homes?
S Nobody.
S Exactly. And your water is already contaminated.
S I don't think you can go anywhere.
Even on a normal day you cannot travel so if I didn't leave at the first message, I will have to stay home.
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S 1 would still be there and I f eel that Shoreham will open.
People who are l
unhappy about this should move of f Long Island.
M You win some, you lose some is your attitude?
l S Righ t.
To thcse of us who are nuicidal most of the time, these messages pose little threat.
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. S I think I would go with what this man said about living here on Long Island, you put up with the risk.
Bu t I do think that the messages are very poorly planned.
The last message there was no mention of the wind velocity and so f ar as the brochure is concerned, there should be some reference to a TV set that has all kinds of maps and diagrams zbout exit routes, etc.
S The f umes f rom the cars that you breathe everyday are causing you problems.
I think it is interesting that they still haven' t told anyone beyond the 10 mile limit to leave.
There is risk in any technology.
There is a risk breathing carbon monoxide. That is progress. Why add one unnecessary risk when there are l
other ways to make electricity.
That is the point.
I am not against l
technology, or advancement but we don't need this.
S So you pay a little more for electricity.
You don't need it.
l M LILCO f eels that if there really was an accident like this that happened that 1
the people would listen to instruction f rom them and they would do what LILCO l
l would tell them to do.
Do you think that LILCO is right about this?
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No.
No way.
People will go for themselves and their own and most people will not listen to authorities.
S I think LILCO is crazy to believe that because nobody believed them when we had the hurricane af termath and we didn' t get our electricity back.
That was a 1
I natural disaster and this is an unnatural disaster.
S I agree with what these people are saying. Anybody would realize that you cannot accomplish anything without a form of order.
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. S What LILCO says is that if you look at what happens in hurricanes and floods and tornadoes when people are asked to leave, a lot of them don't leave and they say that is the same thing that would happen if there were a nuclear accident in Shoreham.
S We live in a complex on a peninsula and there is only one way in or out of our road. At 2:30 in the morning a fire truck came through telling everyone to l eave.
There was no place to go.
They were expecting an eight foot tidal wave.
They tell you leave your pets, leave this, leave that.
Go where? The people who went to the schools, there was no room. Within a half an hour to an hour a lot of people came back.
And that was just a hurricane.
M Sue LILCO says that the same thing will happen if there is a nuclear emergency,
that people won't leave.
S I didn't leave.
3 They won't leave.
S People are afraid of things that they cannot see, they cannot see radiation. A lot of people will panic and leave.
S I think when they tell us that all these people who will control an evacuation, will in effect commit suicide by standing there directing traffic, let's not pay attention to them anyway.
It is simply lies.
Tapes like this is propaganda.
S The fact that human error allowed this incident to happen, how can you trust them af ter this incident happened.
They allowed it to happen in the first place.
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. S What caused Three Mile Island, a lousy water valve.
M So you think that they are wrong, and that people will leave.
S If they can.
S I think the element of time and how you view a situation based solely on time.
A hurricane we have been exposed to so it is not the unknown. We all know that it will pass within a matter of hours.
But we see radiation over a period of many, ma ny ye a rs.
So I don't think they are correct; they cannot assume that l
you won' t le ave.
S I did not leave for the hurricane and I live down at the bay.
Bu t I would leave I
f or e4 Lathing lika r,tdioattivity; I would leu /e with my children.
S I have no expertise on the subject, but I feel that nuclear power is here.
We are going to have to live with 1.t.
On Long Island, we have to learn to live l
l with it if we are going to invite high tech industry, to keep our young people working, especially on a global basis we have to keep ourselves in a competitive position. And to maintain our lifestyles. We have to compete in energy on a global basis and we have to learn how to control nuclear energy.
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l S Yes but that plant is already obsolete.
Once you start a plant, they don't know what to do with it and how to shut it down.
Before it ever opened, it was obsolete.
I S Why couldn't they have done something with another power source.
Why did they l
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have to spend millions of dollars on this.
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. S Because they don't wa nt to admit they ara wrong.
3 What is this the government. This is not supposed to be the government, the people are supposed to be involved.
Big business is ruling i'l of the population of Long Island.
S The American way.
M Does anybody else have any last thoughts about this whole evacuation scenario?
S You are not going to evacuate Long Isl and, so forget it.
S I think that if there are announcements, it has to be in clearer language that i
everybody down to children can understand.
No Code A, look in ho,ur b,ook.
Clear, simple language.
It has to be clarifie.d so people won't panic.
People will panic more when they hear enese endel, messages.
S People are going 'to phnic as soon as they hear radioactive release.
You can get a feel of this righi /in here., Probativ 60% of the peor.le will panic, then it ir f
will turn to fury. They will be in. a frenzy. There/will b'e sore trouble from s
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that than of the actual accidentJ l,
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S This whole thing lf.e totally exasperating. Do y:,u realize what is happening _
here. All this winey t.nat these people in big business decided that : hey we re '
going to spend on this plant, for what? For money?
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i S Cheaper electricity.
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i S I think the rateg will go up.
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S They are not going to lose no matter which way it goes.
1 M - I would 117 co thank you all for taking the time and coming here to help in l
this research.
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