Braced for impact
North Jersey fallout shelters offer glimpse of Cold War history
By: David M. Zimmer
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey
..... At the height of the Cold War, federal officials drew maps that told Americans where to go in case of a nuclear attack.
.....
In Passaic, one of those places was a library.
..... Inside the Reid Memorial Library, a fallout shelter sign still lists a capacity of 90 people. Some of the supplies meant to support that number remain in the building, sealed in their original packaging.
..... The building was never, designed for that purpose.
.....
It was a gift to the city form Peter Reid of Reid & Barry, a prominent 19th-century fabric bleaching and dying firm in Passaic, who donated the land, the building and even its furnishings,s aid former city historian Mark Auerbach, Decades later, it was folded into a federal civil defense system that relied on buildings just like it.
.....
Some of the items still inside the fallout shelter include Penicillin tablets sealed in an amber-colored glass bottle that, according to tis label, expired in March 1968. there are also Cascarra laxative tablets, crackers, baking soda, eye drops and nose drops and diarrhea medication. The shelter also has large containers that were meant to hold water but are now empty. according to some of the labels, most items were packed and shipped out in May 1962.
..... Auerbach said the library's construction made it an obvious choice. During the Cold War, it would have been the safest place in the metro area in the event of a nuclear attack, he said.
..... In the 1960s, as tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated, federal officials began identifying buildings that could provide protection after a nuclear attack. The concern was not only the last itself, but what would follow. Radioactive fallout could spread across large areas and remain dangerous for days.
..... Rather than build a network of bunkers, engineers surveyed cities and towns, looking for basements, reinforced construction and enough interior space to hold large numbers of people. Libraries, schools, spot offices and municipal buildings were assigned capacities based on how many people they could hold under those conditions. Supplies were distributed in a way designed to sustain occupants for a limited period while radiation levels outside declined.
..... In the late 1950s, civil defense officials encouraged homeowners to build shelter in basements and back-years, promoting designs and, in some cases, constructing demonstration models. In Bergen County, that effort took a more visible form.
..... In Ridgewood, the area;s first demonstration fallout shelter was built to show residents what they could construct in their own homes. It was the first part of a broader push that preceded the shift to public sites, according to reporting in The Record.
.....
Within a few years, the strategy had changed. Instead of asking residents to build their won shelters, the government mapped out space within communities, concentrating shelter capacity in public buildings.
..... The system expanded quickly. By the mid-1960s, more than 200,000 buildings nationwide had been designated as fallout shelters, according to federal civil defense data. the network was built into places residents already knew, and the shelters were marked with signs meant to be recognized in an emergency.
..... In New Jersey, the effort reached into cities and suburbs.
..... In Princeton, 45 buildings were designated and stocked as fallout shelters in 1963, including schools, churches, municipal buildings and the local post office, according to records complied by Princeton University's Nuclear Princeton project. The sites were spread across the town, forming a mapped system of shelter locations.
..... Similar haring strategies were used to protect key assets.
.....
In Morris County, a hardened underground facility in Netcong was built during the same period to maintain communications in the event of an attack. the two-level structure, operated for years by AT&T, was designed to house about 30 people underground for up to three weeks, according to the Center for Land Use Interpretation. The building, later known as the Roxbury Vault, was constructed with concrete walls more than 2 feet thick and enclosed in steel. It is now sued as a secure records storage facility.