A survey taken five years ago of those who live around New York’s Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant showed the flaws in modern evacuation plans. According to the survey, only 45 percent of those living within the 10-mile zone said they knew where they were supposed to go in the event of an emergency. Seventy-three percent said they would try to reach children at school and would not go to assigned reception centers. This would, needless to say, severely complicate efforts to move people out of the region. And here’s the scariest part: 60 percent of residents within 50 miles of the plant said they would try to evacuate, which would virtually guarantee that those closest to the plant would be trapped in the disaster zone.
Sociologist James Johnson has done study after study on emergency workers’ reactions to evacuations, the most compelling of which was one he conducted in the vicinity of Shoreham Nuclear Power Station on Long Island in New York. When asked “What do you think you would do first if an accident requiring a full-scale evacuation of the population within 10 miles of the plant were to occur?,” 68 percent of firefighters and 73 percent of bus drivers said family obligations would take precedence over emergency duties. Less than a fourth of public school teachers surveyed said they would help evacuate students.
This article appears in Sep 7-13, 2005.
