Three Mile Island Contemporary Reflects....

Subject: WELCOME HOME!
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 09:21:16 -0500
From: SLJJWJ@aol.com
To: kubik@iquest.net

Hi Vic and Bev,

This morning I have been reading about your trip to Chernobyl--very interesting. Perhaps I find reading about Chernobyl more interesting than the average person because we live within the 25 mile radius that would have been evacuated back in 1979 if Three Mile Island had melted down.

Reading it brought back many memories from then. It was a distinct possibility that we could have had to leave our home and never return. It made us think about what that would be like. We made mental plans of where we would move and what we would do. Makes me want to be more involved in helping in any way I can because we could have been where those people are now--perhaps could be in the future.

We were in the process of building our present home (where you visited) which is across the street from the house we then were living in--so we would have had to leave two homes and we didn't know if insurance would cover a Nuclear meltdown. We had three preschool children at that time and were of course concerned about the health issues. As it was, radiation was spued out in large amounts, at least within the 16 mile radius.

Vague reports are not confined to Ukraine, to this day reports conflict as to how much radiation escaped from Three MiIe Island. Pregnant women and preschool children within a 10 mile radius were urged to leave during the crisis--could later return as the radiation dissipated and threat of meltdown ceased. Many within that 10 mile area claim to have a myriad of health problems, but those complaints are usually pretty much ignored.

Sue Johns