Robert Reid has been here before.
The 77-year-old Mayor of Middletown, Dauphin County held the same title 30 years ago when Three Mile Island's Unit 2 nuclear reactor partially melted down and set off a panic that led to an evacuation order for all pregnant women and children in his community.
So when Reid received a telephone call at 8:45 Saturday night from Ralph DeSantis, a spokesperson for TMI, that there had been an event inside of the facility the mayor did not panic.
What he did was call some of the borough's emergency officials and told them to head to his office so they could meet.
Nearly an hour passed before Mayor Reid called Dauphin County's Emergency Management Agency to see if they had any updates to the situation.
"And when I called the county, county said, 'What are you talking about?'" Reid said Monday about his conversation with the dispatcher who answered the phone.
"I said, 'You don't know that there was a leak at the island?' They said no, and the supervisor said, 'I've been here since seven o'clock and this is the first I've heard of this.'"
"I said, "Oh boy,'" Reid said.
Exelon Corporation, the company that operates the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, told CBS 21 News that at about 4:00 on Saturday afternoon the facility's warning system detected airborne radiological contamination inside the reactor building.
The reactor has been shut down since late October so workers can install a new generator.
Beth Archer, a spokesperson for Exelon, said that about 150 employees were sent home following the detection of the contamination. A handful of those workers were found to have increased levels of radiation in their systems, but the amounts were the equivalent of three x-ray examinations, according to a spokesperson for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
"We did our best to make sure we had the right information at the right time so that we could go out and say exactly what we said on Saturday night," Archer said.
What Exelon said came in the form of an e-mailed press release at 11:33 pm Saturday, three minutes after the 11:00 newscast had ended.
Mayor Reid said he was surprised that Dauphin County's 911 Center was not informed of the incident prior to his telephone call, which came approximately five and a half hours after it began.
Reid said he believes notification should have come sooner, and that it will happen in the future.
"I'm quite sure even if it's a non-reportable incident, I believe they're gonna report it to the local officials," Reid said.
