INDOOR AIR-RAID SHELTERS

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 120, 14 February 1941, Page 8

INDOOR AIR-RAID SHELTERS

New Design In Britain

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY. February 12.

The Government has succeeded in achieving a satisfactory design for indoor home shelters, and is to make a tree issue in certain areas to people with incomes below £350 a year. A proportion of the shelters will lie on sale.

In announcing this in the House of Commons, the Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security, Mr. Herbert Morrison, said: “The course of events in the 'past few months has given strong emphasis to the advantages of shelter within the home. It achieves not only dispersal, but warmth and dryness, and avoids the discomfort of leaving the home at night and dislocation of family life. "Experience of the effect of bombing has shown that houses afford more protection than was at one time supposed. We have, therefore, turned to the question of designing a shelter suitable for installation indoors and which should afford protection against the consequences of being pinned under the debris of a house brought down by a bo'zb exploding near it.”

Mr. Morrison said that the shelter decided upon was designed for installation on the lowest, floor of a house of two or three storeys, and would accommodate two adults and one older child or two younger children. It would not lie practicable in the early stages of distribution to cover anything like the whole country, and accordingly, in consultation with the regional commissioners, he had selected tt number of areas to which priority would be given. In answer to a question. Mr. Morrison said that the new indoor shelters were not yet in production, but they would be by the end of March. He added that while the income limit for free distribution of shelters was formerly £250. it had now been decided to increase it to £350.

Broadcasting a description of the new shelters, Miss Ellen Wilkinson. Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Home Security, said: "Our experts have produced a strong steel structure for inside the house. You can use it as a table for meals or work, so that the whole room is not put out of action. At night screens hook on the sides. There is the added protection of the house walls, a steel top to support debris, anil a way of escape through the detachable ends and sides The table shelter has been so designed that householders can put it together themselves with a spanner and tt hammer. This is important, because there is no labour to spare for its erection." Miss Wilkinson added that the shelters could only be produced to the extent of the share of steel allotted by the production executive. Regarding bag shelters, she gave it as her opinion that the worst problems in this connexion were over.