Global Security Newswire

Huntsville, Ala., has tapped an abandoned mine to become part of the most sophisticated nuclear fallout shelter plan in the United States, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, March 2).

The mine could hold as many as 20,000 people in the event of a nuclear attack.  Planners hope to find additional space in churches, libraries, university dormitories and research halls.  Combined, the shelters would provide shelter for every inhabitant of Huntsville and neighboring Madison County.

"It would be a little trying, but it's better than the alternative," said Andy Prewett, a manager with mine owner Land Trust of Huntsville and North Alabama, which is providing the space at no cost.

While Huntsville is a relatively small city far from areas considered at high risk of terrorist attack, the city's emergency management planner said that a nuclear bomb detonation could spread radioactive fallout over hundreds of miles.

"If Huntsville is in the blast zone, there's not much we can do.  But if it's just fallout … shelters would absorb 90 percent of the radiation," said Kirk Paradise, who developed experience planning fallout shelters during the Cold War.

The United States cut funding to its fallout shelter program in 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The Homeland Security Department after Sept. 11 developed a metropolitan protection program with provisions nuclear fallout shelters.  However, no city has planned a shelter system as extensively as Huntsville, which developed the plan with a $70,000 federal grant.

So far, the emergency management agency for Huntsville and Madison County has marked 105 locations as fallout shelters capable of holding an estimated 210,000 people.  The agency has been seeking 50 additional sites to serve as shelters for 100,000 more people.

Many cities have adopted a "shelter-in-place" strategy advising residents to seal a room in their homes using plastic and duct tape if a biological, chemical or nuclear attack takes place.  Huntsville officials said such a strategy would work best in a radiological "dirty bomb" attack, but more complete shelters would be needed to absorb nuclear weapons fallout (Jay Reeves, Associated Press/Google News, Sept. 27).