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Reporter Joins Group In Fallout Shelter

Reporter Joins Group In Fallout Shelter image
Parent Issue
Day
12
Month
February
Year
1969
Copyright
Copyright Protected
Rights Held By
Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
OCR Text

Reporter Joins Group In Fallout Shelter

By Dennis Chase
(News Staff Reporter)

“The United States has been attacked!” “Hurry, hurry . . . into the shelter . .

The projector reeled on as Ann Arbor Police Sgt. Richard Hill, the city’s civil defense director, showed a film last night at the regular monthly meeting of the Ann Arbor Citizen’s Band Emergency Group. It was entitled: "Operations in Public Shelters.”

The group, made up of 30 citizens who voluntarily assist the police department and other agencies in emergencies, was invited to spend some time Wednesday in a fallout shelter for part of a civil defense test.

No one volunteered. I was there to watch the film because I was chosen by my editor to enter the fallout shelter in the basement of city hall along with 14 persons training to be “shelter managers.”

The exercise is the second step in a three-part Michigan Civil Defense program to prepare managers for the task of supervising a shelter in case of an emergency.

Food (biscuits) will be rationed, and the managers will be taught to draw on the talents of each person to insure that items like medical attention and recreation are provided.

Thomas J. Hampton of the division of public services, Michigan Technological University, was to be here from Lansing to supervise the simulation. University of Michigan officials and John Palmer, Washtenaw County Civil Defense director also was on hand.

Reason for the concern is that the area lacks an adequate number of shelter managers. Hill said there are about 12 trained persons in this field, and a need for 1,200, along with an equal number of radiological monitors. After this shelter exercise and a critique of it, to be completed on Feb. 26, the area will have 14 additional managers.

How long will this test last? No one is saying. Their story is: you wouldn’t know the length of time required in a shelter if a nuclear bomb were dropped, so why tell you now? Hill dramatizes it by relating the story of one person who was in a shelter as part of a test for 24 hours and demanded to be released. 

“Some just panic,” he said. “The main problem is to coexist with one another. You would be surprised how much this entails.”

As near as I could determine, there are enough supplies in the shelter to keep us down there for at least two weeks. So boss, if I don’t show up for work tomorrow call the milkman and . . .

[Image Caption: News Reporter (At Left) In Shelter]