UNDERGROUND VAULT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 111, 11 April 1931, Page 12

UNDERGROUND VAULT.

HIDES FRENCH GOLD. More than half of France’s enormous gold reserves, amounting in all to more than 50,000,000,000 francs (about £400,000,000) is hidden away far below the busy streets of Paris in the new vault of the Bank of France. This vast accumulation of precious metal is second only to the gold stock of the Federal Reserve banks of the United States. The subterranean fortress which houses this great wealth has been constructed to withstand not only the most ingenious and efficient safecrackers, but also the onslaught of invading armies, revolutionary battalions, or the most destructive- airplane bombs which have yet been devised. In case of need 2000 workers can take refuge in these vaults and live there in comfort and safety for six months.

There is a large kitchen which would do credit to any up-to-date hotel, completely equipped with steam pans, ranges, dish-washing machines and various labour-saving devices. A six months’, supply of canned and preserved foods is kept on lrand, and there is a huge refrigerator. The vaults have their own electric lighting plant. An artesian well provides an independent water supply. Proper ventilation is assured- by an ingenious system which would defeat a gas attack by blowing any dangerous gases back through the ventilating chambers into which they, might have been introduced. There is even a phonograph and records to make a protracted stay underground more enjoyable. Construction of these vaults, which lie underneath the Bank of France Building, not far from the Opera, was commenced not long after the war. It took about three years for workmen employed in shifts for 24 hours each day to hew out of the solid rock the main treasure chamber and its approaches. The principal vault, 80 feet underground, has an area of 10,000 square meters, or about 2J acres. The rocky ceiling is supported by 750 reinforced concrete pillars. The walls are of reinforced concrete 15 feet thick, with a layer of asphalt waterproof material to prevent the intrusion of moisture.

Approach to the main vault is through a series of corridors and gigantic steel doors. The first door, made of special steel, weighs eight tons and is opened and closed by secret machinery known only to a few bank officials. Beyond this is a second door weighing more than 14 tons

which is opened and closed by an electric engine operating on rails. At the very entrance to the main vault are other doors designed to be closed only in emergencies. They cannot be opened from outside, but only from within. The treasure chamber is brilliantly lighted. Ingots of gold are piled one upon another in row . after row and enclosed in steel cupboards fronted with screens of woven wire. Other cupboards contain countless bundles of new banknotes fresh from the presses. This enormous treasure, which so far exceeds in value all the fabled riches of the Arabian Nights, reposes amid the most modern of surroundings at the hub of a great European capital and is handled with an everyday air of complacent efficiency which makes it 6 presence here appear to be the most natural thing in the world. But even this “business as usual” attitude cannot deprive the great hoard of precious metal of its romantic glamour.