Paris Defence Against Air Raids

Northern Advocate, 27 May 1938, Page 4

Paris Defence Against Air Raids

The entire air raids precautions system for the five-and-a-half million Parisians is controlled by the police. 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 seventy-siv syrens 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.” Buildings Classified.

Government architects have classified 27,256 Paris bpildings 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. 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. Hermetically Sealed. 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 cutside.

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.