When Springfield was named one of 23 state capitals to participate in a government shelter survey, Cernich was appointed to direct the survey.Ĭernich and his team examined structures to define protection levels and determine the number of people each shelter could hold. In the autumn of 1960, Lee Cernich of Springfield was serving as deputy civil defense director for Springfield and Sangamon County. Built in the 1930s, its basement was reconfigured in the early 1960s and was approved as a nuclear shelter site. One example is the Emmerson Building at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. Most shelters built in the 1950s and ‘60s were in existing buildings reinforced to provide radiation protection. The Illinois Emergency Services and Disaster Agency replaced the ICDA in 1975. On the state level, the Illinois General Assembly created the Illinois Civil Defense Agency in 1951 to provide assistance in the event of a nuclear attack and to give training and information about survival plans. The cost, he said, “could be borne by business property owners in the area … The parking lot would pay for itself over a period of 20 years.” While a two-level underground garage was built when the Old Capitol was reconstructed in the 1960s, it didn’t include a bomb shelter. In November 1951, Abe Roberts, manager of Roberts Brothers men’s clothing store, suggested the city create underground parking below what was then the Sangamon County Courthouse (now the Old Capitol) and design a shelter there to accommodate 10,000 people. Springfield businesspeople had their own shelter ideas. The cost must have proved too much, as there is no follow-up to the idea in local newspaper archives. (Courtesy SJ-R)ĭiscussion of how the Springfield area should prepare for the possibility of nuclear war had begun a decade earlier.įollowing two nuclear tests by the Soviet Union in the fall of 1951, the Springfield City Council debated whether to include a large public shelter inside the parking garage slated for construction at Seventh and Monroe Streets. The shelter had 12-inch-thick concrete walls and piped-in well water and held two weeks worth of supplies. Third-grader Larry Sapp in the Sapp family’s basement shelter off rural Peoria Roadin 1961. “They’re not just looking at them now,” Strongman commented. The Illinois State Journal reported the fair display attracted “soaring interest compared to other years.” erected a demonstration shelter near the Poultry Building. It was positioned in the family backyard, much like an outhouse.įor the 1961 Illinois State Fair, the Barker-Lubin Co. One cost-conscious Cold War shelter manufacturer sold a model made from the wood of a Douglas fir tree. Meanwhile, a number of people built private shelters in backyards or converted basements. The smallest public shelter – capacity five people – was inside the Mode O’Day clothing store on East Adams Street. Other public shelters were in the Sangamon County Building, the post office, the State House Inn, the Myers Brothers store, and inside several public schools. The largest could hold 7,000 residents at City Water, Light and Power, while, downtown, the Franklin Life Insurance building would have accommodated another 7,000. A 1965 survey revealed 196 public shelter locations in Springfield alone. Nuclear bomb shelters, both public and private, were once located throughout Springfield and Sangamon County. In fact, severe weather – especially two tornadoes that hit Springfield in June 1957 – was one of the reasons Sangamon County bolstered its Civil Defense system in the early 1960s. Some of the air raid sirens installed under Strongman’s directorship during the 1960s continued to alert people of tornados into the 2000s. One of the coordinators of the Springfield drill was Vernon Strongman ( 1912-76), a former shoe repairman who had been named coordinator of local civil defense programs in 1957. Similar exercises were performed across the nation. Yet for those who grew up during the early stages of the Cold War, a Civil Defense drill of the magnitude undertaken in Springfield in 1964 wasn’t out of the ordinary. The exercise, of course, was a large-scale drill, something that sounds extreme today. Dave Roscetti, left, and Bill Marsh stack sanitation kits (cardboard drums that served as toilets) during the 1964 State Office Building drill.
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