AGAINST AIR RAIDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 69, 23 March 1938, Page 11

AGAINST AIR RAIDS

THE DEFENCES OF PARIS

The entire air raid precautions system for Paris is controlled by the police, says the "Daily Express." From a secret underground control post below headquarters every police station can be, warned of an air raid within four minutes by pressing one button. That button also starts seventysix sirens of nearly foghorn power, and 1220 hooters. Fifty-five thousand citizens already know exactly their posts and duties when the alarms sound. Plans are ready to mobilise a total' of 250,000 for "passive defence." Government architects have classified 27,526 Paris buildings as having cellars strong enough to resist the complete collapse of the buildings above \ them following an explosion. Each one is registered at its local police station as an air-raid refuge. MAPS IN ENTRANCE HALLS. In every house in which there is such a cellar the law compels a map of- it to be hung in the entrance hall. Those 27,256 cellars can hold 1,720,000 people. In the suburbs there are classified 7232 cellars capable of holding 600,000 people. There are already three public airraid shelters, gas and bomb proof, made to Government architects' specifications. Two are in underground metropolitan railway stations. The tube shelters can each hold 8000 people and the other 2000. They can be hermetically sealed against gas, receiving filtered air and fresh filtered water. They are fully equipped as hospitals, and doctors can operate, although poison gas may be thick outside. , Plans have been drawn up for the immediate building of ten such shelters under schools, each to hold 200 people. They are especially for the use of children and old people who would not be safe in gas masks. A network of such shelters will be built later all over Paris. i