Just Another Day

This weekend, I visited my mother in law with my spouse and son in an area North of New York City.  We wanted to spend Mother's Day with her. 

Tired, my mother in law went to bed early Saturday, and I turned on my computer.  Trending on Facebook was a news item. It got my attention quickly.

A transformer at a nuclear power plant had exploded about 6 pm.

The Governor of New York was giving a news conference.

At first, we were told all was well - well, sort of.  There had been a fire.  But the reactor had shut down safely, as it was designed to do.

My mother in law lives about 16 miles from that nuclear power plant, which is called Indian Point.  On the highway, near her exit, is a sign announcing an evacuation route.  We passed it Saturday without much thought.

Now, the public is being told that runoff from fighting the fire may have entered the Hudson River.

Indian Point is about fifty miles north of New York City, and the Hudson empties into the ocean at New York City.  This is not news welcome to anyone living along the Hudson, including the eight million odd people living in New York City.

I had a nightmare thought about what would happen if my mother in law and my developmentally disabled brother in law did have to be evacuated.  It could happen, but, more realistically (I think) it would be due to weather than due to nuclear disaster. Yet, living some 150 miles from them, it has worried us for years.  In a snowstorm, for example, it might be difficult to reach them as we have to pass through the Catskill Mountains.


A potential nuclear disaster 16 miles from family?  Just another day in the life of a long distance caregiver.