Perhaps you are old enough to remember newsreel pictures of Londoners (men, women and children) seeking shelter from German bombs by sleeping in subway stations (the tube in London-speak) night after night, huddled on thin mattresses, fully clothed, side by side, from one end of the platforms to the other, breathing each other’s air. Probably two to three hundred people in each station. Alternatively, you may have seen such scenes in movies.
All this comes to mind as I read (The Post and Courier, Sept. 28, 2007, pg 1AA) the story and view a picture of a 10 acre underground quarry being readied in Huntsville, Alabama, to shelter 20,000 people from the threat of nuclear terrorism by al-Qaida or some other terrorist group. Even if I move to Alabama (highly unlikely) I am not crawling into some hole with 20,000 other people, probably mostly strangers, not one-percent of whom are on my Christmas card list and sharing this cave with them and the colony of bats currently in residence. I only intend to be with 20,000 people in above ground, open venues such as Fenway Park or Lambeau Field. I stopped going to the North Charleston Performing Arts Center some time back because the place - in my opinion - is a fire trap. The 24 rows in the auditorium are too long (they progressively widen from 30 to 66 seats) and lack intervening front to rear aisles to facilitate orderly, expeditious entering or exiting.
Officials in Huntsville are using $70,000 they got from Homeland Security to kick-start this project; despite the fact that Congress cut off funding for shelters after the fall of the Soviet Union and the federal government hasn’t published its latest list of approved shelter in 15 years. What has gotten into these people, those who dreamt up this asinine project and those who funded it? Congress ought to put a stop to this right now before a couple of million dollars is requested and awarded to carry this project forward. Are you listening Representatives Henry Brown and James Clyburn, and Senators James DeMint and Lindsay Graham?
