Task force: Cape Cod nuclear accident strategy lacking
Truro Police Chief Kyle Takakjian said Monday that Cape residents and their public safety leaders are "woefully and inadequately prepared" should there be a radioactive release at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, whether residents decide to stay in their homes or area emergency centers or make a break for the bridges.
As Charles Noyes, Bourne's emergency management coordinator, put it, "there's nothing in place for Cape Cod."
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"We've never been a part of the planning process," Noyes said during a meeting of the Barnstable County Regional Emergency Planning Committee's task force on Pilgrim.
Although the Cape has a traffic plan to use in weather emergencies, it does not have a plan related to a nuclear incident.
Planning committee members discussed results of a recent phone survey of Cape residents, conducted by KLD Engineering, a New York-based firm that specializes in traffic patterns and evacuation planning.
The survey, paid for by Entergy Corp., owner and operator of the 41-year-old power plant, revealed most Cape residents had no idea whether their communities fell within the emergency planning zone — a 10-mile radius around the Plymouth plant considered at highest risk in a nuclear incident.
Getting residents who live in the emergency planning zone to safety would be the priority after a radioactive release. None of the Cape is in that priority zone.
About 70 percent of the 500 Cape survey respondents said they would evacuate if told residents in the emergency planning zone were evacuating. About 50 percent of the respondents said they would clear out even if they were told they lived beyond the emergency planning zone.
The survey responses negate assumptions made when emergency evacuation plans for the area around Pilgrim were drawn up. Those plans assumed no more than 20 percent of Cape residents within 15 miles of the bridges would decide to evacuate.
The survey, however, put half the 222,000 year-round Cape residents — and that population doubles in tourist season — in their cars, snarling traffic on the Cape as well as on main roads being used to channel South Plymouth residents west to safety.
Noyes said survey results confirmed what Cape public safety leaders have believed for years: "People out there are going to try to get out of Dodge."
Noyes blames state emergency planners for the Cape's lack of knowledge regarding appropriate actions during a radioactive release.
"Public education is critical, and it should have come from (the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency)," Noyes said. "They really dropped the ball."
Barnstable Deputy Police Chief Craig Tamash predicted residents would simply panic in a nuclear event. "Even if we're not covered with a plume of radioactive material, you're not going to convince all the people there's no danger."
Sean O'Brien, emergency preparedness coordinator for the regional committee, said the survey could serve as a starting point. "It gives us a number — a percentage to work with," he said.
KLD will provide more data in the next year, including some analysis of the Cape's road network. According to Takakjian, it will be up to Cape public safety leaders to use the data to develop plans for evacuation.
Diane Turco, founder of an antinuclear group called Cape Downwinders, serves on the task force.
"The team here may have to consider there is no way to evacuate the Cape, and that's the reality of it," Turco said. "This group is professional and conscientious, but it might be an impossible job."
Noyes said Cape public safety leaders would produce a plan, whatever it takes.
"I'd be surprised to see any public safety official throw up their hands and say, 'Oh, well,'" Noyes said. "Nobody's going to say, 'We can't protect you.'"
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