Abstract
THE Government has now announced its decision on the subject of providing heavily protected shelters against air attack for large numbers of the civil population, and it has come to the conclusion that such a policy is impossible as well as undesirable. There is little doubt that the demand for deep tunnels and ‘focal’ shelters of the type advocated by the Finsbury Borough Council arose in consequence of statements made by superficial observers in Spain that such shelters were available for many of the inhabitants of Barcelona and other large cities, and that their provision was mainly responsible for the small number of casualties that had resulted from the more recent air raids in Spain. This, too, in spite of the fact that the statements were contradicted in January last by the person in the best position to know, namely, the chief air raid officer in Barcelona. That official was reported in The Times to have said that only about thirty thousand persons out of a total of nearly two millions in Barcelona had such shelters available, and that only about half the population had shelters of any sort, which consisted chiefly of cellars in private houses, and covered trenches. They had learnt from experience the necessity of evacuating the areas that were made special objectsof attack, such as the docks, and of clearing the streets and of gettingunder cover of some sort.
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Conference on Air-raid Shelters. Nature 143, 814 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/143814a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/143814a0