EVACUATION PLAN

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23315, 29 April 1941, Page 2

EVACUATION PLAN

* ■ COASTAL AREA OF NEW SOUTH WALES

(F.0.0.C.) SYDNEY. April 24. In a survey of the National Emergency Service of New South Wales, the State Director, Colonel Lorenzo, revealed that plans provide for the evacuation of 238,000 people from the coast in an emergency. They would be accommodated in homes, halls, and shearing sheds. There would be no wholesale or indiscriminate evacuation of children and women, said Colonel Lorenzo. Movement would be as a family unit and groups with similar community interests would, as far as possible, be transferred to the same area. Evacuation centres have been demarked, and a line from the Queensland border to the Victorian border would strike through the middle west of the state. Detailed organisation in far western areas has not been made because of the difficulty of evacuating so far.

The evacuated people would be provided with ration tickets for food, which would be obtained through normal channels—the butcher, baker, and grocer. Chief wardens in the various rural areas would control the organisation. ‘‘No refugee camps will be established,” said Colonel Lorenzo. “No mothers will be separated from their children. The accommodation available is likely to be sufficient in any circumstances which can be foreseen at present. The only compulsory evacuation will be from ‘battle areas' defined by the military authorities. “Because school children are evacuated from the East End of London, it does not follow that we must evacuate school children from any part of Sydney,” he added. . "Because of Sydney’s ‘spread’, our A.R.P. problem is less difficult. London ‘workers' area’ contained 1.300,000 people, at a density of 115 to the acre. The density in Sydney's ‘workers’ area’ of 300,000 people is only 18 to -the acre. London would need to evacuate 97 out of 115 in its industrial area to get down, to Sydney’s low density.”