OLD FALLOUT SHELTERS SIGNS OF BYGONE COLD WAR ERA.Byline: Alex Dobuzinskis Staff Writer GLENDALE - The fallout fallout, minute particles of radioactive material produced by nuclear explosions (see atomic bomb; hydrogen bomb; Chernobyl) or by discharge from nuclear-power or atomic installations and scattered throughout the earth's atmosphere by winds and convection currents. shelter sign is still up in a hallway at the Glendale courthouse, but call it a sign of the times A Sign of the Times was a 1966 single by Petula Clark. Written by Tony Hatch, the uptempo pop number juxtaposed Clark's driving vocals with a powerful brass section. She introduced the tune on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 27, 1966. that the basement shelter now stores files instead of food rations and emergency supplies. A reminder of a period in the Cold War when air raid sirens could any minute announce an incoming nuclear attack, the sign is a historical relic - since the shelter itself has been all but forgotten. ``Knowing today what I know about atom bombs and all that, no one would have survived down there,'' said Administrative Assistant Mary Rhoads, an overseer of the Glendale courthouse. Dating from when the building at 600 E. Broadway was built in 1958, the shelter has been used for storage since well before Rhoads got to the courthouse seven years ago. The former shelter looks much like any basement would, with exposed pipes, boxes stacked on top of each other and shelves lining the walls. A court employee one day stuck a paper sign on the door to a maintenance crawl space crawl·space or crawl space n. A low or narrow space, such as one beneath the upper or lower story of a building, that gives workers access to plumbing or wiring equipment. Noun 1. , mistakenly identifying that as the nuclear shelter, not knowing that the basement itself was the shelter. ``I was raised in the 1950s here in Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. , so I was definitely very aware of the Cold War and I remember going to grammar school with someone who had one of those fallout shelters in their backyard,'' Rhoads said. Fallout shelters became especially popular after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, major cold war confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. After the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the USSR increased its support of Fidel Castro's Cuban regime, and in the summer of 1962, Nikita Khrushchev secretly decided to , when President John F. Kennedy "John Kennedy" and "JFK" redirect here. For other uses, see John Kennedy (disambiguation) and JFK (disambiguation). John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917–November 22, 1963), was the thirty-fifth President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in ordered the Soviet Union to remove nuclear missiles it had secretly installed in Cuba, said Arlene Vidor, president of the Glendale Historical Society. Vidor remembers air raid sirens that were regularly tested when she was growing up in Chicago, and the fear such exercises caused. ``Scared to death, looking up at the sky all the time, waiting for the big one,'' she said. Another former nuclear shelter was just blocks away at the Carlos J. Moorhead Post Office, at 313 E. Broadway. ``Since I live up in Foothill, I said, boy, that's a long way to run in a nuclear war,'' said handyman Paul Wilson Paul Wilson may refer to:
The post office dates from 1934, but the basement shelter was built in the late 1940s, said postmaster postmaster - The electronic mail contact and maintenance person at a site connected to the Internet or UUCPNET. Often, but not always, the same as the admin. The Internet standard for electronic mail (RFC 822) requires each machine to have a "postmaster" address; usually it is Lisa Ball. Food and items such as toilet paper were stored in the shelter, but the last time it was stocked appears to have been 1963 because that was the date on supply boxes found there. The post office was renovated after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake The Northridge earthquake occurred on January 17, 1994 at 4:31 AM Pacific Standard Time in the city of Los Angeles, California. The earthquake had a "strong" moment magnitude of 6. , and in 1998 some boxed crackers were found. A supervisor who has since retired gave the crackers a taste. ``Pretty stale, but they weren't that bad,'' Ball said. Some parts of the post office basement have windows open to the outside, while other parts have thick walls and no windows. Equipment is stored in the basement and part of it is used for a training room. ``I don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. if something happened today if we would be able to use it,'' Ball said. Officials said the shelter at the Glendale courthouse is definitely out of service. But the fallout shelter sign in the hallway will stay. ``That sign's been there and I'm not going to take it down, because I think it's a little bit of history,'' Rhoads said. Alex Dobuzinskis, (818) 546-3304 alex.dobuzinskis(at)dailynews.com CAPTION(S): 2 photos Photo: (1) Administrative Assistant Mary Rhoads shows part of the old Cold War-era fallout shelter in the basement of the Glendale courthouse, which is now used to store supplies and records. (2) Paul Wilson recalls seeing the fallout shelter in a post office during a school tour. Evan Yee/Staff Photographer |
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