LARGE DISPERSAL

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 50, 28 February 1942, Page 8

LARGE DISPERSAL

TEST ON TUESDAY

CENTRAL CITY BLOCK

On Tuesday the • several thousand people working and doing business in the central city area, from Panama Street to Plimmer's Steps, and back to Customhouse Quay, will be, at a surprise hour, directed to carry out a mass dispersal exercise. The waterfront buildings and wharves will carry on as usual, without dispersal in this test.

When the alarm goes the trams will stop in Lambton Quay, but services will run by Customhouse Quay. Motor traffic will stop in Lambton Quay and side streets.

Everyone in buildings ' and on the streets will be required to disperse, mainly using the Kelburn tram tunne] to Talavera Terrace.

Only fire guards, authorised E.P.S. officials, police, and essential duty men are to remain in buildings. »

Women and girls are to wear street clothes, not simply leave buildings without hats and coats.

Office staffs are to leave their buildings in such order as they would do in case of actual raids, that is, placing in safes or elsewhere records, money, and so on.

In some of the exercises so far a proportion of those taking part have wandered and dawdled along. That sort of exercise gets nowhere. The dispersal must be smartly carried out in an orderly manner. "* A Red Cross unit will be available to remove those people unable for physical reasons to leave the area quickly on foot.