BOMB SHELTERS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 69, 18 February 1939, Page 7

BOMB SHELTERS.

COAIPREIIENSIASE PLAN

VAST UNDERGROUND SYSTEAI

LONDON, Feb. 9. Britain’s first comprehensive local scheme to provide 100 per cent saiety from air raids is published by the Finsbury Council, London. It is “the result of four months’ investigation by distinguished architects and engineers, who advocate deep underground bomb-proof shelters. It is proposed to construct 15 underground shelters that will hold 132,000 persons and will cost £1,387,000, or £lO per capita. The shelters will he vast multistoried concrete cylindrical drums with spiral ramps. They will be 70ft deep and 122 ft in diameter and will allow six square feet for each person. They will be buried beneath invulnerable layers of reinforced concrete, sand and earth. The top layer will consist of a concrete detonator slab against which bombs will imniediatelj Several entrances will allow of the influx of 40 persons per second. The shelters will have air filters similar to those in the AJaginot Lino. They will include stores for loot!, water, telephones, internal lighting, shortwave radio and first-aid posts and will he connected by tunnels. All the shelters will be able to be used as car parks in peace time. The council’s report, challenges the Government’s “tinkering” policy, and describes Sir John Anderson s steel and blastproof shelters as death traps which would lie blown up into the air by exploding bombs. Similarly,"the Government’s shoring up of basements is described as useless and dangerous.