Speaker 1: You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Bankey. Most of
Speaker 1: the children lived on the street. Others had left school
Speaker 1: to work so their families might have enough food to eat.
Speaker 1: No matter where they came from, they worked from morning
Speaker 1: until night, regardless of the weather. Called newsies, the children,
Speaker 1: who were mostly boys, sold newspapers on New York City
Speaker 1: street corners. Whatever their backgrounds. The news he's shared a
Speaker 1: system after buying a stack of a hundred papers from
Speaker 1: the publisher for fifty cents, that'd sell each paper for
Speaker 1: a penny. That meant they earned just fifty cents for
Speaker 1: a day's work if they were lucky enough to sell
Speaker 1: all hundred papers. It's the equivalent of sixteen dollars a
Speaker 1: day in today's money. And in July of eight, New
Speaker 1: Yorkers stopped getting their papers. The news ees went on strike,
Speaker 1: and that put wealthy news giants like William Randolph Hurst
Speaker 1: and Joseph Pulitzer in a bind. The newspapers had bumped
Speaker 1: the price to sixty cents a bundle, cutting into the
Speaker 1: newses miniscule profits, and when the kids found out that
Speaker 1: not only had the price gone up, but the bundles
Speaker 1: included fewer papers that had enough. They tipped the New
Speaker 1: York Journal delivery wagon over and stole the papers. The
Speaker 1: next day, the news hees met at Manhattan's City Hall
Speaker 1: Park and formed a union. From that day forward, they
Speaker 1: all vowed to never buy or sell a paper until
Speaker 1: Hurst and Pulitzer met their demands returned the price for
Speaker 1: a hundred papers backed fifty cents. Eighteen year old Louis
Speaker 1: Biletti and twenty one year old David Simons were some
Speaker 1: of the older news ease and became the initial leaders
Speaker 1: of the newsboys strike. The publishing giants ignored the newses.
Speaker 1: In their eyes, the problem would soon be resolved. They
Speaker 1: had enough money to hold, and the kids didn't. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: police broke up strikers, often by force, but the news
Speaker 1: hees knew the system from the street level. They ambushed
Speaker 1: the journal wagons, stealing the papers so scabs couldn't sell them.
Speaker 1: They marched through the streets, tearing up papers and dousing
Speaker 1: unsympathetic news stands with water, though never the women resellers.
Speaker 1: Bloody told the group a feller don't socle. Lady Bloody
Speaker 1: held speeches in the park, telling fellow news ees and
Speaker 1: gathered crowds alike. I'm trying to figure how ten cents
Speaker 1: on a hundred papers can mean more to a millionaire
Speaker 1: than it does to newsboys, and I can't see it.
Speaker 1: From then on, more patrons took up the newses cause
Speaker 1: the papers started to panic, and the public thought it
Speaker 1: was funny that rich men like Pulitzer and Hearst were
Speaker 1: hemorrhaging money due to a bunch of poor street kids.
Speaker 1: And sure, the strike had hurt the papers, but the
Speaker 1: kids weren't faring well either. Within a week, word leaked
Speaker 1: that the papers had bought Ballettian Simmons. When both began
Speaker 1: wearing nicer clothes, the two were kicked out of the
Speaker 1: union and narrowly escaped beating. After two weeks, Pulitzer and
Speaker 1: Hurst agreed to buy back any unsold newspapers each day,
Speaker 1: Thinking they've been offered a solid deal, the children, some
Speaker 1: of them just seven years old, went back to work. Sadly,
Speaker 1: labor laws barely existed at the turn of the century,
Speaker 1: and it would take more than child labor to change them.
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Bogelbaum. Welcome to American shadows by the American
Speaker 1: dream was more of a nightmare for New York City
Speaker 1: sweatshop employees. Factory workers earned barely enough to scrape by.
Speaker 1: The housing developments where they lived were filthy and unsafe
Speaker 1: without proper pervices or regulation. Garbage lined the streets. Parents
Speaker 1: couldn't afford decent food, much less childcare, and children often
Speaker 1: roamed the streets and attended kept at or below poverty levels.
Speaker 1: Frustrated workers began to clash with city officials and the
Speaker 1: corruption at Tammany Hall. Women wanted voting rights, workers wanted
Speaker 1: better pay and conditions. Wealthy business owners rewarded politicians for
Speaker 1: preventing or sidelining new laws aimed at protecting workers. Safer
Speaker 1: conditions and higher pay affected their bottom line. After all,
Speaker 1: Tammany Hall politicians kept the tensions at bay, occasionally doing
Speaker 1: local communities some small favor, maybe a cleaner park or
Speaker 1: a half hearted attempt at trash pick up. Every Day,
Speaker 1: workers piled into the sweatshops, often working from five in
Speaker 1: the morning until nine at night. Hundred hour workweeks were
Speaker 1: not uncommon. Tuberculosis spread quickly in overcrowded factories and poorly
Speaker 1: ventilated sweatshops. In July of nine, two hundred garment workers
Speaker 1: at Rosen Brothers shirtwaist manufacturing shop walked out, demanding pay increase.
Speaker 1: The shirts women's blouses that buttoned up the front had
Speaker 1: become all the rage, and employees hoped the huge demand
Speaker 1: would prompt management to give them a decent wage. Management
Speaker 1: refused to negotiate, hiring strike breakers to attack the picket lines.
Speaker 1: If the picketers fought back tammany officials ordered the police
Speaker 1: force to arrest them or beat them back. The clothing
Speaker 1: company wasn't the first or the last to use the technique,
Speaker 1: but this time the workers didn't back down. The strike
Speaker 1: went on for a month before the company relented and
Speaker 1: gave their employees a raise. Elsewhere in the city, women
Speaker 1: and teen girls working in a necktie shop had it
Speaker 1: rougher being female. They were paid a pittance compared to
Speaker 1: their male counterparts. Their pay was so small that no
Speaker 1: matter how many hours they worked, they couldn't afford to
Speaker 1: live anywhere except in the attics, sellers, and small rooms
Speaker 1: that the company provided, and despite the outcry for equal rights,
Speaker 1: the businesses and politicians ignored them. When the women went
Speaker 1: on strike, the company felt certain that losing both their
Speaker 1: pay and their homes would have them back to work
Speaker 1: in no time. But after weeks of lost profits, the
Speaker 1: necktie company relented. While gender equality had a long way
Speaker 1: to go, the women and girls were given a raise.
Speaker 1: The early nineteen hundreds were a time of change, though
Speaker 1: the women's and workers rights advocate Clara Lemlich worked tirelessly
Speaker 1: as a union organizer. Her small five foot frame allowed
Speaker 1: her to move from shop to shop mostly unnoticed. The
Speaker 1: long hours, miniscule pay, and unsafe working conditions were only
Speaker 1: a part of what angered her. Women and girls were
Speaker 1: expected to work with salacious foremen and managers who changed clocks,
Speaker 1: and supervisors who followed them to the bathroom and subjected
Speaker 1: the women to daily search is of their purses and
Speaker 1: other belongings to businesses. Clara was a threat that had
Speaker 1: to be dealt with. It's unclear witch company or companies
Speaker 1: hired Charles Rose and his gang of men to stalk Clara,
Speaker 1: but their goal was clear, make sure Clara knew who
Speaker 1: she was up against in the most brutal way possible.
Speaker 1: On September they followed her through the streets of New
Speaker 1: York's Lower East Side, until they were away from public view.
Speaker 1: She recognized Charles and a few of the other men
Speaker 1: as strikebreakers and understood what was about to happen. Two
Speaker 1: days later, she returned to the picket line with broken
Speaker 1: ribs and her face battered. The story of her brutal
Speaker 1: attack served to tell the others what the men and
Speaker 1: those who had hired them would sink to. Max Blank
Speaker 1: and Isaac Harris, who owned the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, watched
Speaker 1: the strikes but paid little attention. So far, they had
Speaker 1: managed to keep their employee is in line, though not
Speaker 1: because they treated them much better. The company was the
Speaker 1: largest manufacturer of shirtwaist blouses, popular with the poorest career
Speaker 1: woman to the richest of socialites, and the men felt
Speaker 1: their operation would go unscathed. The opposite was true. Their
Speaker 1: company was about to make some major changes when it
Speaker 1: came to employee welfare. Blank and Harris were Jewish immigrants
Speaker 1: from Russia, where they had endured horrific conditions and sweatshops themselves.
Speaker 1: Despite this, neither man seemed particularly bothered that they had
Speaker 1: become perpetrators of the same type of treatment that they
Speaker 1: had fled from. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company occupied the eighth, ninth,
Speaker 1: and tenth floors of a building on Washington Place. The
Speaker 1: average work day began at eight am sharp. The young
Speaker 1: girls and women talked about the latest play or fashions
Speaker 1: as they jostled their way to the freight elevators. There
Speaker 1: were stairwells, but those remained locked and reserved for the management,
Speaker 1: mostly men, like owners Blanket Harris and factory manager Samuel Bernstein.
Speaker 1: The passenger elevators were also locked and manned by operators.
Speaker 1: Only management and customers were permitted to use them. On
Speaker 1: March nineteen eleven, the women and girls, some making as
Speaker 1: little as seven dollars a week, hurried to their stations
Speaker 1: as they did every day. There were quotas to be met.
Speaker 1: With more women in the workforce, demand for the simple
Speaker 1: button up blouses meant the company expected their employees to
Speaker 1: work faster, and by the end of the day garments
Speaker 1: piled up at the buttonhole machine. Business was good. Blanket
Speaker 1: Harris claimed they were the shirtwaist Kings. Their company bundled, boxed,
Speaker 1: and shipped over two thousand garments a day. Every day.
Speaker 1: The men raked in the money, and all that wealth
Speaker 1: went to their heads, to them the workers didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot to complain about. Six hundred employees were read
Speaker 1: out over three floors, after all, and they had the
Speaker 1: latest sewing machines. And while they were expected to work
Speaker 1: thirteen hour days, seven days a week, the shifts were
Speaker 1: shorter than at some other companies, with no breaks except
Speaker 1: a half hour lunch. Smokers often took drags on their
Speaker 1: cigarettes between cutting fabric, then tossed the butts into nearby
Speaker 1: trash cans. Despite the flammable materials surrounding them, no one
Speaker 1: called them on it. At four thirty pm that day,
Speaker 1: a foreman began rounds to distribute the weekly pay envelopes,
Speaker 1: Starting on the tenth floor, Some of the young girls
Speaker 1: talked about a weekend date with a new bow of
Speaker 1: some older women playned a nice dinner at home. One
Speaker 1: girl started to sing a popular song, Every little movement
Speaker 1: has a meaning all its own. Then a scream echoed
Speaker 1: from one of the floors below. Like the others, Bernstein
Speaker 1: turned to look out the tenth floor window. Smoke billowed
Speaker 1: past them. One of the women shouted that a fire
Speaker 1: had broken out on the eighth floor, a wide open
Speaker 1: space full of flammable cotton and tissue paper. Every employee
Speaker 1: immediately understood the danger. On the eighth floor, one of
Speaker 1: the fabric cutters grabbed a fire bucket to douse the flames,
Speaker 1: though one bucket was hardly effective against the rapidly spreading fire.
Speaker 1: The hundred naty workers on the floor headed for the
Speaker 1: nearest stairwells in an attempt to force the doors open.
Speaker 1: Realizing the fire was spreading fast and the stairs were blocked,
Speaker 1: others climbed out onto the balcony and window ledges. On
Speaker 1: the tenth floor, Bernstein gathered a few of the other
Speaker 1: men and began hooking up the emergency fire hose. When
Speaker 1: they turned on the valve, they discovered there was no
Speaker 1: water pressure. To Bernstein's horror, one of the workers clothes
Speaker 1: caught fire, engulfing him in flames. Employees crushed themselves against
Speaker 1: the door, screaming for help. When someone on the other
Speaker 1: side finally opened one of the doors. Bernstein had to
Speaker 1: rescue a woman who had fallen from being trampled and
Speaker 1: one of the seamstresses, Dinah, tried calling the ninth floor.
Speaker 1: Bernstein pulled her away and towards the staircase. They were
Speaker 1: met with a wall of people trying to shove their
Speaker 1: way down the stairs. If he and Dinah joined them
Speaker 1: did meet a fiery death. Somehow, he had to convince
Speaker 1: as many people as he could their only chance of
Speaker 1: survival meant heading up to the roof of the burning building.
Speaker 1: Outside the building, spectators began to gather. Employees who had
Speaker 1: found their way to the rickety fire escape crawled down
Speaker 1: to an open window on another floor, finding the stairwells
Speaker 1: locked there as well. Some of them reappeared moments later,
Speaker 1: while some did not. More workers found their way onto
Speaker 1: the fire escape. The spectators watched in horror as the
Speaker 1: flimsy metals swayed and creak, finally buckling under the weight,
Speaker 1: spilling twenty people to their death. On one of the floors,
Speaker 1: twenty four year old yet A Lubits began to cry
Speaker 1: when she realized the stairwells were locked. A manager promptly
Speaker 1: reprimanded her. She paused, but only for a second, deciding
Speaker 1: that if she were about to die, she'd act anyway
Speaker 1: she wanted. She followed other girls who were hopping from
Speaker 1: table to table dodging the fire. The flames were everywhere,
Speaker 1: and their hair began smolder. Coughing from inhaling smoke and
Speaker 1: ash Yetta found her way to the staircase, where Bernstein
Speaker 1: ushered her up the stairs. Owner Isaac Harris, had been
Speaker 1: on the phone placing orders when flames shot out of
Speaker 1: the tenth floor elevator shaft. Having a key to the
Speaker 1: passenger elevator, he quickly ushered seven d other employees passed
Speaker 1: the fire and crammed as many of them as would
Speaker 1: fit into the elevator car, sending it to the rooftop
Speaker 1: and back. He had time to rescue a second load
Speaker 1: of people, but out a third when the elevator rails
Speaker 1: buckled from the heat. Harris and the remaining employees hurried
Speaker 1: for the stairwell and headed to the roof. Everyone covered
Speaker 1: their faces as best they could and climbed the dark
Speaker 1: stairwell filled with smoke. They reached the rooftop and had
Speaker 1: another choice to make the fire engine sirens rang in
Speaker 1: the distance, but the fire wouldn't wait. They had to
Speaker 1: get off the building before the roof collapsed. South and
Speaker 1: east sides of the building had nothing but a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty ft drop. Two taller buildings sat on the
Speaker 1: north and west sides. Survival meant reaching one of them. Below,
Speaker 1: Engine Company seventy two barreled down Broadway. Flames shot out
Speaker 1: of the eighth floor windows. The firefighters began hooking up
Speaker 1: hoses to the closest fire hydrants. As people began to
Speaker 1: crawl out onto the ledges above them, Captain Howard Rush
Speaker 1: realized what was about to happen. He ordered his men
Speaker 1: to set up life next catch the jumpers. He had
Speaker 1: little hope the nets would work to save them from
Speaker 1: such a fall, but he had to try. A man
Speaker 1: on a ledge pissed a woman, and the two clasped
Speaker 1: hands and jumped to their deaths. Others followed a One
Speaker 1: woman's dress caught momentarily on a steel sign. When her
Speaker 1: burning clothes gave way, she fell to the sidewalk below.
Speaker 1: Those trapped on the roof were aware of the fire trucks,
Speaker 1: and they also knew they couldn't wait for firemen to
Speaker 1: reach them, nor would they survive jumping. Desperate, Harris took
Speaker 1: a running leap and managed to grab hold of one
Speaker 1: of the taller buildings ledges. He pulled himself up and
Speaker 1: over and summoned help. A janitor supplied him with a
Speaker 1: ladder and the two men lowered it to the roof
Speaker 1: and the employees stranded there. The professor in the second
Speaker 1: building also found two painters ladders, and though the ladders
Speaker 1: were too short to bridge the buildings, his students lowered
Speaker 1: them and held on while Bernstein hoisted people up to
Speaker 1: reach the bottom rungs until he was the last on
Speaker 1: the rooftop. It was now or never. The flames had
Speaker 1: reached the roof, with threatening to cave in at any moment.
Speaker 1: The students called out to Bernstein, encouraging him to make
Speaker 1: a leap for it. He took several steps back to
Speaker 1: get a running start, He ran and jumped, managing to
Speaker 1: just barely grab the last rung on the ladder. When
Speaker 1: he reached the safety of the other rooftop, he and
Speaker 1: the others had a sobering view their co workers, who
Speaker 1: hadn't made it to the roof with them, were leaping
Speaker 1: from the ledges. Sixty two people jumped to their deaths
Speaker 1: that day. Had the stairwells and elevators been unlocked, evacuation
Speaker 1: would have taken barely a few minutes. Instead, approximately a
Speaker 1: hundred and forty six people died. The papers reported on
Speaker 1: the cause and how long it had taken firefighters to
Speaker 1: put out the blaze. All that remained then was figuring
Speaker 1: out who was at fault. The answer should have been
Speaker 1: easy enough. After the investigation, Blank and Harris were indicted
Speaker 1: on charges of first and second degree manslaughter in mid April.
Speaker 1: The men hired the best lawyer money could buy for
Speaker 1: their joint trial, which began on December four of nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1: By all accounts, attorney Max Stawyer had the reputation of
Speaker 1: a shark. Getting his clients off on all charges required
Speaker 1: that he destroy all survivors credibility as witnesses. He ruthlessly
Speaker 1: questioned each one repeatedly. When one woman didn't waver in
Speaker 1: her responses, he said that her calm demeanor and repeated
Speaker 1: insistence indicated she had rehearsed her answers instead of speaking
Speaker 1: from memory. And Stawyer questioned the defense's argument that the
Speaker 1: doors had been maliciously locked during working hours to trap
Speaker 1: workers inside. Sure conditions the factory were poor. The building
Speaker 1: suffered from faulty ventilation and outdated heating and cooling systems,
Speaker 1: as well as dimly lit stairwells. Paper and fabric clippings
Speaker 1: littered the floor pemicles were haphazardly stored patterns hung from
Speaker 1: the ceilings. Inadequate fire buckets, and few restrooms to provide
Speaker 1: running water made the factory high risk, but Stawyer claimed
Speaker 1: that the mostly steel and iron building had been advertised
Speaker 1: as fireproof. In short, Stawyer claimed that his clients were
Speaker 1: not negligent. Sadly, the jury agreed and acquitted both men
Speaker 1: of all charges. That didn't stop the civil lawsuits, though
Speaker 1: families remained understandably angry. While the men may not have
Speaker 1: been at fault for starting the fire, they had insisted
Speaker 1: that the stairwells and elevators be locked, and had allowed
Speaker 1: working conditions that were ripe for such a fire. Stawyer
Speaker 1: represented the men in the civil lawsuits as well. One
Speaker 1: by one, he tore down the victim's credibility. In the end,
Speaker 1: neither man paid out a single penny to the survivors
Speaker 1: or their families. The following year, the twenty three litigants
Speaker 1: managed to get the company's insurance to pay just seventy
Speaker 1: five per claim. Later, in Blank found himself in trouble
Speaker 1: once more for locking doors in his Fifth Avenue factory.
Speaker 1: This time the judge had to do something, so he
Speaker 1: fined Blank twenty dollars and then apologized for having to
Speaker 1: punish him. While this piece of American history is bleak,
Speaker 1: changes did come from such an avoidable tragedy. Investigations into
Speaker 1: the Triangle Shirtwaist company led the New York State legislature
Speaker 1: to create a Factory Investigating Commission. The commission looked into
Speaker 1: conditions at factories throughout the city. They frequently tangled with
Speaker 1: tammany hall officials, yet still managed to put sixty four
Speaker 1: new labor rights laws into place. The new laws mandated
Speaker 1: the building access not be limited, that there be adequate
Speaker 1: fireproofing and fire extinguishers. It also called for the installation
Speaker 1: of fire alarms and sprinkler systems. As for the conditions,
Speaker 1: workers were to be given eating facilities separate from their
Speaker 1: desks or work areas, and factories were to provide proper
Speaker 1: lavatories with running water. There's more to this story. Stick
Speaker 1: around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.
Speaker 1: Workers aren't the only ones who have found themselves in
Speaker 1: danger due to unsafe workplace conditions. In March of nine nine,
Speaker 1: Americans flocked to theaters to see the latest blockbuster disaster
Speaker 1: movie in the China Syndrome, a journalist discovers a cover
Speaker 1: up on safety issues at a nuclear power plant. Though
Speaker 1: the movie became a box office hit, many people found
Speaker 1: the premise a little unrealistic. They couldn't have been more wrong.
Speaker 1: On a sandbar in the Susquehanna River, just ten miles
Speaker 1: from Pennsylvania's capital of Harrisburg stood three Mile Island, a
Speaker 1: state of the art nuclear power plant. In v eight.
Speaker 1: The four year old plant had a second reactor added
Speaker 1: to ramp up affordable and reliable power during the energy crisis.
Speaker 1: Nuclear power plants used the controlled fission of uranium to
Speaker 1: produce controlled heat, which is used to turn water into steam,
Speaker 1: which drives turbines that generate electricity. The problem started at
Speaker 1: four in the morning on March nineteen seventy nine, when
Speaker 1: a minor malfunction caused temperatures to rise in the unit
Speaker 1: to reactor. It automatically shut down and a tiny pressure
Speaker 1: valve opened to release an excess of cooling water in
Speaker 1: the form of steam, but then the valve failed to close.
Speaker 1: There was no sensor in place to report this failure,
Speaker 1: so no one noticed that too much cooling water was
Speaker 1: draining out through the valve. Residual heat from the fission
Speaker 1: process continued to heat the core. By early morning, the
Speaker 1: temperature reached four thousand degrees, just a thousand shive a meltdown.
Speaker 1: If a meltdown occurred, radiation would drift across the countryside,
Speaker 1: exposing the population to radiation poisoning. Another automatic system was
Speaker 1: pushing in replacement coolant water, but the stuck valve was
Speaker 1: sending it into the pressurizer, which you do not want
Speaker 1: to fill up with water. The workers noticed, and in
Speaker 1: a panic, shut down the emergency water system. While they
Speaker 1: scrambled to understand what had happened. The contaminated water released
Speaker 1: radioactive gases into the plant. While not life threatening, the
Speaker 1: levels were dangerous, and without a cooling mechanism, the core
Speaker 1: continued to heat. A six fifty six am, the plant
Speaker 1: supervisor declared a site area emergency. A half hour later,
Speaker 1: station manager Gary Miller announced a general emergency. By eight
Speaker 1: a m. News of the accident spread outside the plant.
Speaker 1: Independent investigators found slightly elevated levels of radiation from the
Speaker 1: leaking water. The plant's parent company, Metropolitan Edison, downplay the damage,
Speaker 1: insisting that no radiation had been detected off the plant grounds.
Speaker 1: Governor Dick Thornberg had a difficult decision. Should he believe
Speaker 1: the plant manager, which would save a lot of trouble,
Speaker 1: or the investigators and order and evacuation. Considering the nature
Speaker 1: of the accident, He briefed the White House, confusing the
Speaker 1: situation further, it was unclear who had the authority to
Speaker 1: declare an evacuation. The plant operators still had no answers
Speaker 1: and were undecided on how much information the public should know.
Speaker 1: State officials turned to the National Regulatory Commission NARC Inspectors investigated,
Speaker 1: noting that the accident was caused for concern, but not
Speaker 1: particularly alarming. There was another problem, though the NRC had
Speaker 1: difficulty gathering accurate information. By eight p m, plant operators
Speaker 1: finally realized that shutting down the water had been a mistake.
Speaker 1: After restarting the pumps, core temperatures began to drop, though
Speaker 1: half the core was already molten, The narrowly missed a
Speaker 1: complete meltdown by about an hour. The trouble wasn't over yet, though.
Speaker 1: On marcht operators discovered a highly flammable bubble of hydrogen
Speaker 1: gas within the reactor building back on. A reaction between
Speaker 1: exposed zirkiloid tubes and superheated water had created hydrogen gas.
Speaker 1: The NFC worried that the bubble had the potential to
Speaker 1: cause a meltdown or even a giant explosion. They just
Speaker 1: weren't sure. The plant released a public statement asking residents
Speaker 1: to stay in side. Governor Thornberg advised that pregnant women
Speaker 1: and all children within a five mile radius evacuate until
Speaker 1: further notice. Though the evacuation was voluntary, people panicked. More
Speaker 1: than a hundred thousand people fled the area. It took
Speaker 1: two weeks before many returned. In early April, President Jimmy
Speaker 1: Carter arrived at the plant. Operators assured him that the
Speaker 1: hydrogen bubble had been bled away from the system and
Speaker 1: no longer posed a problem. In the aftermath, investigators looked
Speaker 1: into emissions that had been released and how the accident
Speaker 1: had affected workers at the plant and nearby residents. They
Speaker 1: concluded that wild workers had been exposed to unhealthy levels
Speaker 1: of radiation. No one outside of the plant seemed to
Speaker 1: have been affected. Clean Up took fourteen years and cost
Speaker 1: more than a billion dollars, and the accident spurred massive
Speaker 1: changes in nuclear regulation making other plants greatly safer than
Speaker 1: Three Mile Island. In twenty nineteen, the plant shut down
Speaker 1: for good. The destroyed Unit two is sealed and slated
Speaker 1: to be dismantled. In American Shadows is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum.
Speaker 1: This episode was written by Michelle Muto, researched by Ali Steed,
Speaker 1: and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive
Speaker 1: producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn
Speaker 1: more about the show, visit grim and Mild dot com.
Speaker 1: From more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts