Meltdown

I was sitting here trying my hand at writing some short fiction when my ears picked up on a distant low growl, which soon developed into a full-blown siren. A three-minute long siren. Let me tell you, three minutes is an awfully long time when you are not sure whether to panic, send a final love-note to your husband via the wonder of the internet and settle your eternal accounts with your Maker before watching your flesh melt like the wax dummies in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or just yawn lazily and get back to your typing.

I know enough to realize that disasters at nuclear power plants are very rare and usually very well contained. So well contained, in fact, that the number of deaths related to plant accidents is much smaller than the popular imagination would have it. I am sure the chances of dying from a nuclear accident are probably about as great as the odds that I will be bit by a shark while being struck by lightning in an airplane full of snakes before plummeting to my death by impalement on the spike of an Eigentumshelm... but still, the sound of a nuclear siren when you live in the 10-mile radius known technically as the "oh crap!" zone, when you didn't know it was coming, causes a more than a few heart palpitations and a jolt of hot adrenalin.

Um, so, to backtrack. I'm typing, the nuclear siren sounds, and I send a frantic little message to Dan via Google talk saying something like "Oh crap" "Nuclear siren". I'm a rather capable person, and I was prepared for just such a moment. Tests are run regularly on the siren system so that in the event that they are needed, they will work. I have read emergency information for just such a moment. I have found local radio stations. I have found local TV. I know where to find the website about the Harris Plant. Or I did until that blasted siren sounded. Suddenly none of my links can be found.

Dan suggests radio and TV. I start with the TV What do I take with me if I have to evacuate? and press the power button. I scramble for the remote and flip to channel 98 to find out which channel is most likely to be broadcasting local information. Of course, once I get there, the guide list has just passed the local channels and is scrolling through the 70 other channels and the pay-per-view options at a leisurely pace before pausing for a commercial break. I pick a local-ish station and turn the volume up. On drones a heartbreaking story of 9-11 disaster begets disaster as I run back to my computer, thinking maybe radio or internet will be the better option.

Rather than turning on the radio in the bedroom I knew we should have purchased a battery-powered emergency radio light... I decided that sound in two rooms would be plenty. I managed to find a local station with streaming audio, so I turned the internet radio on and heard the strange commentator with a raspy voice who is always on this time of the morning was interviewing someone, not about the tragedy that was unfolding in my office Siren sounds do NOT always indicate a need to evacuate, but about some other subject of great global import.

The phone rings. It's my dad. He's asking about car rentals for their visit in October. He's talking calmly into the ear piece while the TV shouts from the living room and the streaming radio swims around my free ear. The cats, they haven't even had breakfast... I had been trying to surf to the power plant site when the phone rang, but instead the browser froze, and the computer refused to budge. Time to reboot, while I dug up the phone book to look for local car rental places.

Are the neighbors leaving? I wandered over to the window, hiked up the mini-blinds and looked out at a woman driving by in her maroon minivan No, she's not in a hurry, is she? still discussing the relative merits of car rental companies with my dad. There was no other movement up and down the street. This neighborhood is mostly deserted already. I'm not glowing, and nobody seems to care enough to broadcast it on the news, so I am pretty sure that was a test. Still looking out the window, I noticed a city works truck slowly picking up green waste from the curbside. Either we're both dying here, or there's nothing worth worrying about.

Dad and I said our goodbyes, just as I found the "information desk" number for the town. "That was a test. They usually send out postcards, but this time they didn't. As soon as I heard the siren I called dispatch because I knew my phone would be lighting up. They told me they just found out about 10 seconds before the siren sounded." I sighed. Um, isn't there some place, online maybe, where people can find warnings about this sort of thing? "I don't know... that's a good question." So, if it had been an emergency, how do I evacuate without a car? "I don't know, honey. Talk to your neighbors. It's not like we can send a van around." Of course not. "You know, honey, if something happens, we're all gonna get real skinny real quick. I figure it's not worth worrying about." She has a point.

I eventually contacted the company running the power plant and suggested to a very nice woman that perhaps, just perhaps, for the benefit of the people who move into town between the informational mailings that come out every three months (just before we moved in, as it happens), they could put a ticker up on the website that scrolls Siren Test Today at 10. "What a great idea! I'll suggest that to IT. Thanks so much for calling." I sighed as she added, "Oh, and welcome to town!"

Meltdown averted. Narrowly.