This past Wednesday marked the thirty-third anniversary of the worst commercial nuclear accident in U.S history. As the crisis that resulted in a partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island Power Plant began on March 28, 1979, Cecil County Civil Defense was deeply involved in testing the area’s preparedness for a nuclear disaster.

But at Three Mile Island, things weren’t going well, and over the next few days, the incident triggered national alarm.   By Friday night, the third day of the incident, the possibility of a meltdown had become real and a growing hydrogen bubble caused worry about an explosion.  Struggling to get ahead of this rapidly changing crisis and wanting to make sure they were doing everything possible for public health and safety, Pennsylvania officials developed plans to evacuate up to 636,000 people on short notice. The mass evacuation zone included Harrisburg and parts of six counties within a 25-mile radius of the plant.

The primary task for the agency with Cold War roots was the protection of civilian populations during wartime, so the exercise scenario involved a nuclear attack on major Atlantic seaboard cities.  During the course of that day, as operators at the generating station 40 miles from the county’s northwestern border struggled to bring the reactor under control, local officials simulated situations “involving a full range of anticipated trouble, from overcrowded fallout shelters to rioting and looting,” the Cecil Democrat reported.  At the end of the day, “things had gone very well,” John J. Ward, the director of Civil Defense advised.

Preparing for a Nuclear Power Plant Accident

The primary task for the agency with Cold War roots was the protection of civilian populations during wartime, so the exercise scenario involved a nuclear attack on major Atlantic seaboard cities.  During the course of that day, as operators at the generating station 40 miles from the county’s northwestern border struggled to bring the reactor under control, local officials simulated situations “involving a full range of anticipated trouble, from overcrowded fallout shelters to rioting and looting,” the Cecil Democrat reported.  At the end of the day, “things had gone very well,” John J. Ward, the director of Civil Defense advised.

To support such a massive relocation, Governor Dick Thornburgh called for representatives from other states to attend an urgent weekend conference in Lancaster.  There, John J. Ward, the Director, Henry Metz, assistant, Rachel Gray, and Mike Dixon, PIO, learned that Cecil should prepare to receive 2,000 to 6,000 residents from Lancaster County.

Cecil’s Civil Defense agency immediately started preparations over that long weekend thirty-three years ago, as worried Harrisburg area residents warily listened to news broadcasts.  Working late into the night over that unsettled week, Mr. Ward’s staff (Henry Metz, Assistant Director, Mike Dixon, PIO, and Rachel Grey, Secretary) developed a plan for the influx if an evacuation was ordered,

Traffic routes were selected beginning at the Mason-Dixon Line.  The Fair Hill Race Track and the former Bainbridge Naval Training Center were designated channeling points for incoming traffic.  On those spacious grounds, evacuees would be provided with whatever urgent aid they required, including monitoring for possible radiation contamination, before being assigned to a temporary shelter.

The county’s radiological officers assigned to fallout shelters, fire stations, hospitals, and other public buildings pulled out their radiological instruments, which they had used a few days earlier for a nuclear attack training exercise.  Reexamining those Geiger Counters and Dosimeters, they ensured the Cold War instruments were ready should the situation escalate. In addition, the State Department of Health started taking readings. sampling the water at the Conowingo Dam and milk at Whiteford and Rising Sun farms while a State Police helicopter checked for upper air releases ¹.

Places where up to 6,000 people could be fed and housed around the county were pinpointed.  Churches, fire halls, schools, community centers and other sites where emergency housing and food services could be provided were selected.  There were also plans for Port Deposit and Perryville, including the Veterans Administration Hospital, if the Susquehanna River became polluted by radioactivity as both towns drew drinking water from the river, according to the Cecil Democrat.

Before that anxious weekend was over, Cecil’s emergency responders stood ready to assist the Commonwealth if the dreaded call came.  Sitting in the Civil Defense Headquarters, two stories under the courthouse, fire, health, social services, and Red Cross leaders briefed each other on final preparations as they double-checked their rushed work and stayed in constant contact with Pennsylvania via special, public safety radio networks. Phone lines in and around Harrisburg and Three Mile Island were overloaded, making calls difficult to get through.

An Anxious Weekend in Cecil County

While the order for a mass evacuation never came as the threat at the plant eventually subsided, Cecil County emergency officials spent a tense week watching events  unfold at the island in the Susquehanna River.

For additional Cecil County Three Mile Island Photos see this album on Facebook.

Notes & Sources

Baltimore Sun, April 3, 1979, Civil defense unit prepares for worst in Maryland

Evening Sun, March 31, 1979, Maryland: Evacuation Plans Drawn Up; radiation levels still normal

Cecil Democrat, March & April 1979

Cecil Whig, March & April 1979

Endnotes

1. Evening Sun, 1979[↩]

The Friends of the Cecil County Public Library will host a night of local authors on Thursday, April 14 at 7 p.m. at the Elkton Central Library. Dr. Corinne Litzenburg and Mrs. Bobbie Hinman, are the featured authors of children’s books. Brigadier General Ken Wiggins is featured as an author of Delaware military history. Each author will speak about their interests in writing and the process of the craft of writing. Following the program, participants are invited to engage in an informal question and answer session with the authors. Additionally, refreshments will be served and copies of the authors’ works will be available for purchase.

One of the Historical Society’s most experienced family history researchers and a past president of the Genealogical Society of Cecil County, Gary Burns, has worked several years transcribing tombstones at practically every known cemetery in Cecil County. From Bald Friar to Warwick, and every other place in between, he and helpers, have visited quite old country graveyards, as well as those in towns and villages, to record data found on the memorials. Once they collected the information, they entered it into an Excel Spreadsheet.

Gary has given the Historical Society this insightful work so it could be made available on the Web and it will be extremely helpful for researchers. As it stands now, it has just been expanded to contain over 30,000 entries for Cecil County Tombstones. It is still a work in progress and we will add additional data as Gary makes it available. By-the-way, when he first posted it online, it had 16,000 entries.

Thanks Gary for making this valuable update available online.  Click here to go the records

 Clay deposits played a major role in the economy of bygone Cecil County. Some were mined and shipped out-of-state while others provided the key raw material to potters and firebrick makers. Wheel-thrown redware and stoneware were fired in kilns at Rising Sun, Brick Meeting House, NorthEast and Rock Springs. Meanwhile, some Delaware and Pennsylvania potters relied on the county’s clays to turn their pots. The names of some potters like William Carter and Eli Haines were virtually unknown until this book traced the role this craft played in their lives. An exquisite harvest jug fashioned by Carter in 1847 survives today. Other names – Remmey, Grier, Hare, Magee, Brown and Schofield – are much more recognizable to today’s collectors and historians, yet in many cases, connections to Cecil County were unknown or incomplete.

Commercial firebrick operations were attracted by the abundance of kaolin-based clays. Some were short-lived while others carried on for decades. Most companies like Cecil, North East, Wakefield, Green Hill and United molded and fired these refractory bricks around the town of North East.

Potters and Firebrick Makers of Cecil County, Maryland, and Nearby is illustrated with over 100 images, nearly half in color. Spanning 140 pages and 8.5” X 11” in size, this book was built from numerous newspaper accounts, land records, family histories and pottery collections. It provides a valuable window to the past and deserves the widespread interest from fans of local history and pottery enthusiasts and collectors alike.

Available From History in Print, P.O. Box 185, Mendenhall, PA 19357, (610) 388-6836; fairhill3@aol.com  $30.00 

Click this link to view an album of photos from Dr. Koterski’s talk to the Archaeological Society of the Upper Chesapeake

See updated Post, November 22, 1963:  Remembering the Fallen:  Three Cecil County Firefighters Made the Ultimate Sacrifice

Although a lot of time has passed since two members of the county’s fire service fell in the line of duty, it’s important to remember them.  Perhaps someday a memorial can be created to honor those fire, rescue and EMS providers who lost their lives in the line of duty.

Richard L. Loller, 37  – On May 18, 1956, the Chesapeake City Fire Company responded to an urgent call to assist Galena with a fire at the Kent Oil Company.  While battling the dangerous blaze with companies from throughout the area, several explosions rocked the tank farm, the final one coming about 8:30 that Friday morning.  That last death-dealing explosion of a 6,000 gallon tank filled with gasoline sent part of the huge vessel soaring through the air.  Flying debris killed two firefighters and the extreme heat from the flash burned a dozen or more people close to the scene.  Richard  L. Loller, 37, of Chesapeake City and Robert Harry Brice, 24, of Betterton were killed after being hit by limbs falling from a tree.

Steward W. Godwin, 56 — On a Sunday in December 1963, as lightning periodically illuminated the cold rainy night, five airliners flew in a holding pattern above Cecil County, awaiting clearance to land in Philadelphia.  Just before 9 p.m. Pam American Airways Flight 214, carrying 81 passengers and crew was struck by lightning and exploded.  A general alarm was sounded for all available ambulances.  From the North East Fire Company, a unit rushed toward the cornfield just east of Elkton.  On that dark stormy Sunday night, as fire company search lights illuminated the field, emergency responders searched the scene, looking for survivors.  About 1:30 a.m. Steward W. Godwin, 56, of North East suddenly collapsed into the arms of Andrew Scarborough, another North East member, the News Journal reported.  He passed away at Union Hospital, the death being attributed to a heart attack.  He had been a member of the fire company for 18 months, according to the newspaper.

It’s important to make sure their sacrifice isn’t forgotten.   If there are other fallen fighters who made the ultimate sacrifice, let us know so we can add their names to the list.  Perhaps someday there can be a Cecil County memorial, a place to carve their names in granite as a permanent memorial to their service as they protected the people of Cecil County.

Posts Related to the Plane Crash

Pan Am Flight 214 – Update

Pan American Airways Crash Worst Disaster in Cecil County History

The annual volunteer firemen’s carnivals were popular summer events in Cecil County years ago.  Each summer, as the event moved from town to town, large crowds would turn out for an evening of fun and entertainment.  These two photos show the Singerly Fire Company carnival sometime in the 1950s.

 

Members of the USNTC, Bainbridge Fire Department line up in front of the firehouse (Station 12) in the late 1970s.

Event Details

First Lines:  How to Get Started Writing Your Story (and Publishing Your Work)Wednesday, March 16^th at 7pm

Elkton Central Library

301 Newark Ave., Elkton MD  21921

In this workshop and discussion, local author David Healey will share ideas on how to get started on your creative writing project – whether it’s a novel, short story, children’s book or memoir. Also, David will discuss the first steps toward sharing your work with the world and the many avenues toward publishing. He is the author of three novels and two non-fiction books and will describe his experiences working with agents, editors, and publishers large and small.

Registration is required.   To register, please stop by the library, visit our website at www.cecil.ebranch.info, or call 410-996-5600, ext. 481.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the Historical Society of Cecil County explored a captivating period in Elkton’s history during a weekend talk by Mike Dixon.   While the nation faced the bleak days of the Great Depression, business thrived in Elkton for the “honeymoon express” arrived many times each day, and Elkton became the elopement capital of the east.

Its reputation as a place to go for quick marriages started about 1913, and for several decades, the place hummed because of the marriage industry.  From just over 100 services a year at the turn of the 1900s, the county seat was soon working overtime.  The parsons were doing “one marriage every 15 minutes,” which wasn’t “bad for a town of something like 3,000 people,” the News American reported in 1920. The ministers were cranking out some 12,000 newlyweds a year by the mid-1930s as the town in the northern corner of Maryland became America’s Gretna Green.

To accommodate the heavy trade, “marrying parsons set up parlors along the main streets, and competition for brides and grooms was intense during the mill’s heyday.  Each time a train, the Honeymoon Express, arrived at the depot, the cabbies greeted arriving couples.  Not much was required to get hitched in Elkton in those days.  Twelve minutes and a few dollars were all you needed, the Baltimore newspaper reported. Although even the 12 minutes wasn’t altogether necessary. But the dollars were the reporter observed.  Today, the Little Wedding Chapel on Main Street is Elkton’s sole remaining chapel, but several prospective brides and grooms still flock here each week for quick marriages.

It was a fast-paced talk that explored how and why the wedding racket developed in an unassuming Maryland town.  It included many funny stories about the marrying syndicate, its leaders, and the taxi cab drivers.  We also examined how the marrying preachers caused an international incident involving the Iranian government.

NORTH EAST, Md. – In recognition of the 2011 Black History Month theme of “African Americans and the Civil War,” Eric F. Mease will conduct a free presentation about African Americans from Cecil County who fought in the Civil War at 11:30 a.m. Feb. 23, in Room 106 of the Technology Center on Cecil College’s North East campus.

Since his first visit to Colonial Williamsburg with his parents in the summer of 1962, Mease has had an interest in United States history. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Penn State University, a paralegal certificate from the University of Delaware, and a master’s in liberal studies from UD. His master’s thesis, “Black Civil War Patriots of Cecil County, Maryland,” reported on the African-American veterans of the Civil War who were related to Cecil County.

Mease began his career in broadcast journalism in Williamsport, Pa. and then moved to a station in Wilmington, Del. Since 1990, he has been a paralegal with the DuPont Company specializing in intellectual property litigation. Mease is a member of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Historic Elk Landing Foundation, and Historical Society of Cecil County.

For more information, contact Laney Hoxter at 410-287-1043 or lhoxter@cecil.edu.