![]() Today the space under Engine 60 in Hyde Park looks like a lot of basements: Firemen use it to store their workout equipment, as well as bicycles they help repair for kids in the neighborhood. So we have to, of course, go to old firehouses to find this,” says Langford, who remembers Bert the Turtle’s “duck and cover” drills. “Most of the North Side fire houses have been replaced. Langford drives me, questioner Kyle, and his wife, Amanda Snyder, around the South Side to see a few fire stations that had their own dedicated fallout shelters. In some cases, though, the city did more to adapt to Cold War concerns than just slap a fallout shelter sign onto existing buildings and wait for federal supplies - a fact that becomes apparent during a tour conducted by Larry Langford, spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department. Just a few dozen of the 3,000 federally approved shelters had been stocked, months or years after they’d been designated as public refuges. Chicago rates at the bottom of the list of metropolitan cities,” reported David Halvorsen. “According to records of the federal government, Illinois ranks 50th in the fallout shelter stocking program. The Tribune reported supplies for 2.2 million people were sitting “virtually untouched” in federal warehouses at 39th Street & Pershing Road and at O’Hare International Airport. It just kind of dropped off.Īnd by 1963 some survival kits were already deteriorating in storage. None of the agencies that we talked to - local, county, state, federal - could say exactly when they stopped checking up on fallout shelters in Chicago, or even what happened to any of the records about how many shelters existed in the area. Nationally the Pentagon spent more than $80 million on supplies, which included bulgur wheat crackers for nutrition, giant drums of water and “sanitation kits” for personal hygiene. About three quarters of the county’s 5 million people could have fit in the shelters, most of which were downtown, in the Loop.įederal Civil Defense officials were responsible for stocking fallout shelters with everything they’d need to survive at least two weeks underground. In 1967 the Chicago Tribune reported that Cook county had 2,522 public fallout shelters, of which 1,691 were stocked with food and supplies. Practically every town in America had some sort of public refuge like this, and Chicago had thousands. the building that inspired Kyle Bolyard’s question. ![]() O’Brien Water Reclamation Plant at 3500 W. In Chicago those included public school buildings, City Hall and, indeed, the Terrence J. Federal officials affixed these buildings with reflective metal signs measuring 10 by 14 inches. Like many cities across the country, Chicago designated existing structures as public fallout shelters, typically choosing large masonry buildings with windowless basements and thick stone or concrete walls. “Almost every newspaper and every magazine in the country had articles on nuclear war and fallout shelters.” Cold War conversions Some magazine called that the question, ‘To dig or not to dig,’” says Kenneth Rose, a professor at California State University Chico and author of the book One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture. “There’s this huge national debate of whether or not to build a shelter. I know that you will want to do no less.”Īlthough some historians say the speech was mainly meant to intimidate Khrushchev, one effect was to stoke public anxieties about nuclear war. “In the coming months, I hope to let every citizen know what steps he can take without delay to protect his family in case of attack. But the time to start is now,” Kennedy said. “In contrast to our friends in Europe, the need for this kind of protection is new to our shores. Kennedy addressed the nation, pumping up the Civil Defense budget and urging Americans to prepare. “It was just an eerie time,” says Addams.Ĭold War preparation really got hot in 1961, when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev threatened to cut off Western access to Berlin, then a divided city. As apartment dwellers, her family had to have faith in public shelters. And they had those little signs that were saying that you go here, like in the subway, or certain other areas.”Īddams says those who had the money and a little property could build their own bunkers. “People were buying and making fallout shelters, and trying to find out where we could go if there was an attack and all that kind of stuff.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |