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HomeMy WebLinkAboutAddress by William P. Durkee, National Office of CD Address by William P. Durkee Office of Civil Defense Fifth Annual State Civil Defense Directors Conference Stephen F. Austin Hotel February 16, 1965 9:30 A.M. Ladies and Gentlemen: I say that it is a matter of regret that I have never lived in Texas, not only because it is a lovely place, but because it is a very good thing in Washington to have done these days. I would like to introduce a couple of people who came along with me. Lieutenant General George Bundy in the back of the room -- George, would you stand up? George Bundy is a distinguished military man who is the Commander -in -Chief of our forces in Alaska. He works with us as he has invaluable experience. I don't know whether you know about Alaska, but not only in the earthquake but in times previous to the earthquake when the military rendered such effective support, George Bundy had set up the system which, working with Civil Defense, really went to work to produce some real results. And Bob Young, also in the back, if he would stand up, is my executive assistant and he keeps me doing the right things. I would like to, this morning, make this session as informal as I can. I understand, C. O. , that we can have questions. (C. O. Layne: "Yes ") Good. Well, let me tell you where I think we stand on Civil Defense and I will do it in the following fashion: I would like to first describe the President's attitude about this. I know this has been a matter of some controversy, perhaps here in this city. So I think we had better get right into the subject in that fashion. President Johnson in his January 18 message to Congress, said these things about Civil Defense: And you may recall his message this year, other than the State of the Union message, were a series of special messages; that is the Defense message was sent over as a total package of one piece. And he said: "While confidence in our present strength will continue to deter a thermonuclear war, we must always be alert to the possibilities for eliminating destruction which might be inflicted upon our people, cities, and industries should such a war be forced upon us. "Many proposals have been advanced for means of limiting damage and destruction to the United States in the event of a thermonuclear war. Shifting strategy and advancing technology make the program of building adequate defenses against any nuclear tactics extremely complex, "Decisions with respect to further limitation of damage require complex cal- culations concerning the effectivenss of many inter - related elements. Any comprehensive program would involve the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars. We must not shrink from any expense that is justified by its effective- ness, but we must not hastily expend vast sums on massive programs that do not meet this test. -2 - "It is already clear that without fallout shelter protection for our citizens, all defense weapons lose much of their effectiveness in saving lives. This also appears to be the least expensive way of saving millions of lives and one that has clear value even without other systems. We will continue our existing programs and start a program to increase the total inventory of shelters through a survey of private homes and other small structures." Now, accompanying that Presidential message was a budget request for 193. million dollars. This represents about a double budget in terms of the money Civil Defense got appropriated for itself last year. I would like to talk a little bit about what the true meaning of what the President has said here. Last year, some of you may know, Secretary McNamara appeared before the House A rmed Services Committee of the Congres -s and also theSenate Armed Services Committee and he said, in effect -- Look, we're doing a lot of difficult work in the Pentagon to try to analyze and assess what the effect of a nuclear attack on this country might be and what we can do about it, And he said although these studies are difficult, they do give us some guides about what such an attack might be and what kind of countermeasures might be effective. If you don't mind, I would just like to read a bit of what he said, because I think it is important: "A careful analysis has been conducted within the Department of Defense over a wide range of all that the United State and Soviet forces employed under a wide variety of different assumptions as to the manner in which a strategic nuclear exchange might take place and the operational capabilities of U, S. and Soviet weapon systems, that is, their readiness, survival., reliability, and pone raci.on rate. In all such studies, of course, the situations assumed will have to be defined by simplifying the assumptions. There are many variables and uncertainties involved in these situations and relatively only a few, although the major one, can be taken into account in any one analysis. Nevertheless, these studies do provide as good a measure as possible of the relative effectiveness of different size forces under different sets of circumstances. An interesting and important result of these defense studies was the clear demonstration of the great contribution that an adequate fallout shelter program could make to our damage - limiting capability. The analyses indicated that one, if properly planned, nation -wide fallout shelter program would contribute far more to the saving of lives per dollar than an increase in Minute Man missles beyond the level we recommend. And that even if the Soviets were to attack only our military installations, without an adequate fallout shelter program, fatalities from fallout would be very high -- about three times higher than they would be with an adequate Civil Defense program. And, far more important, the effectiveness of an active ballistic missle system in saving lives depends on large part on the existence of an adequate Civil Defense System." He concluded these remarks by saying that "Civil Defense is an integral and essential part of our overall Defense posture." Now, some of those terms you don't understand, and I don't blame you, but what Secretary McNamara said is that since Civil Defense came to the Pentagon, our -3- work has been to find out whether or not Civil Defense can contribute anything in the modern world to effectively limiting damage, that is, saving lives in the event of an attack on this country, and Civil Defense has been viewed not as a humanitarian operation, as indeed it is, but as an essential part of the defense structure. And is, if you will, a kind of weapons system that has to be measured for its effectiveness against other weapon systems. And what he said is, all of our studies show that the single most effective first thing that you can do to limit damage in a nuclear attack in this country is to have a Civil Defense pro- gram and to have a Civil Defense program founded on fallout shelter protection. It is perfectly clear to us in our studies, too, that a shelter program of a different sort, that is, a blast shelter program, which also might save lives against the direct effects, has many, many difficulties -- technological difficulties, certainly operational difficulties, and at this point in time it certainly does not look to us to be any kind of feasible alternative to the fallout shelter program. If we are going to protect ourselves against the direct effects of weapons, we will have to do it by other systems. Now the other systems are those like an anti - ballistic missle system which is under active development in the Department of Defense and which is being actively pursued because it has the potential of intercepting an incoming missle and preventing its burst on the ground and preventing its direct effects on the ground. But no matter what kind of defensive system of that sort that might be created, Mr. McNamara said, without an effective Civil Defense program none of them make sense and none of them will work effectively so that we have got to have a CD program first. Now, this status of CD in the Department of Defense is also reflected in the kind of manner it is handled. Our budget, for example, is an integral part of the total Defense budget. We are a part of the strategic defense structure of the budget. There is an offensive budget and a defensive budget and Civil Defense is one of the elements along with all of the other military elements. So that what I wanted to make clear to you is that the Federal government and the President and Secretary of Defense are very clear about what they think Civil Defense is, they're very clear about the need for it. they're very clear about what it can do and what it can't do. Now this leads me to the second thing that I wanted to talk about, which is that this clarity of purpose, which I think is new to CD, is difficult to translate into action, as you know better than I. It is all very well to talk about fallout shelters and fallout shelter programs, but it is very difficult to define a program which can produce the kind of results that our program can produce. But I think, strangely enough, we're doing it. I think we're doing it with your help. I'm a little at a disadvantage here. I understand that there are some people here in the room who are not CD people. I'm very anxious to talk to those CD people working in this field like myself so that we can talk about our professional problems, so I think what I'll do is talk about those professional problems and anybody who doesn't understand what I'm talking about, come up and ask me what it was I said after I get through. - 4 You all know about the shelter survey and you all know why we undertook the shelter survey. It may be of interest to you to know that protection against radiation is a technological fact and was stated by the National Academy of Sciences about 1958. You may also recall that the first reaction to that was to talk about the fallout shelters in terms of protection factors of a thousand or two thousand, Talking about them really very much in terms of the kind of thing the x -ray technician does to protect himself from x -ray radiation-- building a lead shield. One of the aspects of our studies in the Department of Defense has been a definition of what kind of protection, what level of pro- tection, would be effected by those factors. And we have found as a result of these studies that a protection factor of 40, a factor known to you, would in at least 90 per cent of the cases save the lives of those who inhabited that kind of protected area in the event of nuclear attack in this country. Based on these studies, and this scientific fact, we conducted a survey, as you know, of buildings in the U. S. and have found now 127 million spaces in about 149,000 buildings. There are some here in Austin and there are, perhaps, some in some of the cities in which you live. Well now, 127 million spaces sounds like a lot of spaces. It is a lot. It is a lot when you consider that when we started this program three years ago, we probably felt there wouldn't be more than about 45 or 50 million. We are finding, on the national scene, that when we continue these surveys, that about 12, 000 buildings every year are built that have about 8 million new spaces in them without anybody knowing that they were there. We have also found out some other curious things: that there are many, many buildings around the country that are less sizeable than those we conducted the original surveys on, and let me just say that 5 or 10 years ago this kind of program wouldn't have been possible because we do take advantage of all the modern techniques of computer systems and all the rest of it. It may interest you again to know that one of the computations on the buildings that we do on the surveys in the areas is done by a computer in a fraction of a second. These kinds of computations, if we had had them done about 10 years ago, would have taken an architect or engineer about 15 to 18 hours to do by hand. You will find these same kinds of techniques around the country as a whole. We believe that we will find many, many spaces in what we call smaller buildings. We have already done sufficient tests of that to know that many smaller buildings have a lot of shelter spaces in them, maybe not for 50 people, but for less than 50 people and they would add up these spaces to many million spaces and we are budgeting for and already have funds appropriated for a survey of this kind of building. We have also-discovered a fact which probably isn't true in this area where you have slap -on -grade construction, but it is certainly true in the Northeast U. S. and in the Middle West, that there are many homes with basements and that many of these homes with basements also have shelter protection in them which is adequate and we are proposing and running tests already on that and working out a means with the National Academy of Sciences to analyze and find that space. - 5 - We have also been working with the 4 merican Institute of Architects and some of you may be familiar with a new term we have invented --I don't quite know how it got invented -- slanting techniques. I think it happened just the way things often happen. Someone in my office somewhere or other said we'll call this slanting techniques and we have been calling it that ever since. But what it is, is a work of architects and engineers. We have a Construction Advisory Committee that works with us and it is composed of official representatives of the American Institute of Architects and of the various engineering associations who have worked continuously with us for the last 2 -1/2 years to work out ways that when your building a building to include fallout shelter protection in it, to maximize that protection at no cost or very little additional cost. I firmly predict that this kind of work, being given now as it is to architects and engi- neers around the country, will revolutionize our ability to include fallout shelter protection in new buildings when they are built. One of the interesting features of this kind of technique is the fact that in many communities, say where a school board is debating about whether or not shelter should or should not be in a school building, there really is no reason for the debate, because a trained architect and engineer can simply include it in the building and at very little or no additional cost so the debate needn't arise at all. We have just published, and there will shortly be distributed, examples of such buildings already built, using these techniques around the country. You will be surprised how many there are and how many more are being built every day, Many firms, for example, are using these techniques in their new building construction to include or increase the fallout shelters in these buildings. We are applying the same technique to Federal buildings and will apply the same technique to military buildings. I don't want to dwell on shelter too long because you know as much or more about it than I do. There are other aspects of shelter development that are equally important. We found, too, that we can ventilate shelter spaces with a ventilation kit, which we got appropriated 1/2 million dollars for by Congress last year to technolo- gically develop. There are potentially 64 million spaces where the radiation protection exists but are not counted in the inventory as usuable space because of inadequate ventilation. These ventilation kits, which are portable small kits, would provide that ventilation and could add that number of shelter spaces. This is shelter and this is the shelter program. As we analyze the situation now, based on these programs, the survey program -s, we will end up in 1970 in this country with shelter for the population of this coun- try, except for about between 1/5 and 1/4 probably. This means that there is a shelter gap in the sense of that nuarnber of people would no be covered by shelter by 1970 except for whatever last minute expedients might be created. I know that youhave had a question about where we stand on HR8200 and I would like to talk on that point right now. As you recall. HR8200, which passed the - House of Representatives year before last, provided for the Federal government to pay part of the cost for creation of shelter spaces in non - profit institutions -- hospitals, schools, welfare institutions, etc. You may recall that when we introduced that bill three years ago, we thought we were only going to get 50 million shelter spaces in the country so that any shelter space, wherever created, would have been of great benefit. I think that I have told you enough now about the shelter inventory across the country as a whole for you to under- stand that it might be that that kind of legislation would not be adequate for the purposes that I am now talking about -- that is, filling in the shelter gap in the places where it needs to be filled in, We have not introduced HR8200 this year and I'm sorry I am not at liberty to give you the Congressional presentation that the Department of Defense has made on that subject, and the only reason why I am not is because these presentations are going on right now. Unfortunately there has been a delay in the legislative process this year. First the Secretary of Defense, who makes these presentations in the posture briefing statement, was ill, Then Viet Nam overtook the presentations so that they have been delayed by 2 to 3 weeks. ass you may know, these sessions are always classified, that is, they are secret briefings. They cover a wide range of topics and what we are able to publish after such a presentation is that portion of the presentation and interchange with Congress which are declassified. As soon as it is declassified, I will get it out to you. What I can now make clear about that is that the Secretary of Defense, in his testimony, I can assure you, very clearly points out the function of CD, the place of CD in the Defense Department, and goes on from where he left off last year in defining the importance of what you are all doing. What we will do this year is to continue the program that we have in the terms of all the survey of shelter space and, by next year, in my judgment, we will be in a much better position to know just what kind of legislation we want to pro- duce what kind of shelter space. For example, I would not rule out at all the possibility that the most effective way of getting shelter space in the places that we need them is not an HR8200 kind of legislation, but perhaps legislation which provides for single purpose, fully funded shelter space in some locations, It might provide in some areas for shelter construction to take place at the last minute, based on the already laid down materials. There is a whole range of possible solutions that have to be looked at and are being looked at, and will be carried to the Congress when we believe we know exactly what it is we want. I want to say another thing about HR8200 which I think is more important than the bill itself, and I know that you are subject to the kind of thing which appears in the public press often, that if something isn't introduced, it is a rejection of something, I think I have made it clear where the President stands on this. The real importance of HR8200 was not the bill but what the House of Representatives studied in the course of hearing testimony about it. As you recall, they spent 8 weeks listening to 108 people talking about CD, And then you may also recall that when we started the hearings, they were against CD and they said so. In fact, there was a staff member of their committee who filed a report s aying this was ridiculous, the whole subject was ridiculous. For 8 weeks the Congressmen sat -7- there and dissected the problems one by one. If you haven't read their report, you certainly should because the significance of that operation was the fact that they carne to different conclusions after they sat listening to the experts talk about this subject. The importance to us, and to you, of that debate was the fact that that happened- -not so much the bill, because as you recall, the bill as it was actually passed provided for an experimental year in which most of the shelter spaces which would have been created would have been created by ventilation improvements. These ventilation improvements, as we knew them then, cost about $11.00 a space. Ventilation improvements that we are talking about using the ventilation kit, as we have developed it, cost about $2. 50 a space, a considerable reduction in cost -- the kind of thing the Congress likes to see and the kind of thing we like to do. So please don't think that HR8200 and the fact that we haven't introduced it this year will in any way affect the intent of the President or the Department of Defense to go forward with CD -- quite the contrary. Now let me talk about some other aspects. I won't talk about the programs of CD. You know them as well, or better than I do. I just want to make this point, there are around the country now 30 million spaces stocked in buildings and this is in about 55, 000 buildings. I just want to report to you that in spite of all the diffi- culties which you know about and I know about, the program does move forward. In spite of all the talk about it, in the country as a whole, only about 10 per cent of those who have been approached to sign licenses for their buildings have refused to do so, In all the country, only 3 per cent of the 10 per cent have refused to do so because they didn't believe in CD and didn't think that it made any difference. I understand that we have a lot of problems. I understand that we have water drums that are difficult. I know they are difficult. I don't apologize for the difficulty, but I can tell you that the trapped water surveys which we have Federal funds appropriated for are intended to take advantage of another fact which we discovered which is that in many, many, in fact the largest percentage of all buildings, there is plenty of water in that building already, trapped in the pipes, available for use. We are also on a research basis studying municipal water systems as a whole, and we are finding some remarkable things about them. It may well be possible that we can use the entire municipal water system in spite of some of the technical difficulties that might exist. We do understand your problems with relationship to water and I think there are practical solutions to these. Radiological monitoring, I know, is a problem and the training of people and the maintenance and calibration of instruments. I was just up in Nebraska and it may interest you people to know that the Nebraska National Guard, cooperating with the CD agency which is, in that state, a part of the National Guard, but independent, has worked out a calibration and maintenance system for instruments that is really working and is being done at very little cost and being done very effectively and we will be getting the kind of experience and information from the activity that I think may be valuable here, at least we are learning many lessons. - g - Let me talk about our place in the Department of the i rmy and let me talk a little bit about the military support. I want it clear, if it is not already clear, that the delegation of authority and responsibility in CD runs from the President to the Secretary of Defense in an Executive Order and this Executive Order of responsibility he is transferred or delegated to the Secretary of the Army. The Secretary of the Army has delegated that responsibility to me. The Secretary of the Army holds these responsibilities, not as a Department, but as a person, if you can make that distinction, for it is a distinction that should be made. He, for example, is the sole stockholder of the Panama Canal Zone. It's an enviable position in one way, but not in another. He has that as a personal responsibility; he has CD as a personal responsibility. The importance of this to you and me is that CD in the Department of Defense is a civilian agency, it is not run by the military servies, it is not budgeted for by the military services, and the military services have no responsibility for our activity. The Secretary of the Army is responsible to the Secretary of Defense directly, as I am responsible to the Secretary of the Army. That being said, let me talk a minute why I think it is a good idea we are in the Army - -the Department of the Army, that is. In the same period of time we have been studying what we should be doing in CD, and I am referring back now to the studies that Mr. McNamara was talking about, as you might expect, the military services have been studying this problem. These joint studies have led the military to look at CD in a completely different way than they ever looked at it before. They have to look upon what you do in your day to day activities in creating shelter and the other systems that make CD possible -- as not something which they can ignore, but something which is vital to their military mission -- and the Army has the military mission of defending the con- tinental United States. They do this, of course, in cooperation with the other services. The whole problem o:. an anti - ballistic missle system, or buying more bombers or airplanes to keep weapons from corning to this country, are a part and parcel of the same system. So the military have been looking at, and we have been looking with them, the role of all the forces in this complex and difficult problem. Well, the result of this kind of look together has been that, not only is there a respect for CD in the military now, and I mean a respect that is much deeper than just appears to patriotism, but I mean a respect which runs to their own pro- fessional role. I have seen that reflected since I have been there in the help that they have given us and the seriousness of purpose with which they have gone about analyzing their own problems. I have especially seen it indicated in the concepts which have been developed for military support of CD. The State Adjutant General was here yesterday talking briefly on this subject. Let me just tell you than an awful lot of people have spent an awful lot of time on that subject and I think the Adjutant General made clear that what we have in mind is not the surplanting of civilian responsibility and authority but the real support the military resources of the CD activities of yourself in this State and all the states. George Bundy and I went down the other day to CONARC, the Continental Army Command, and talked with the Commanding General and all his staff there and our talk was about the -9 - military support to CD. They had one thing on their minds, which was: "In what way can we be of most effectiveness in marshalling and planning to use our military resources that might be available to come to the aid of civilian authorities in the event of an attack on this country. We are working with them very closely, and, as you may know, for the first time, particular monies are being appropriated for this purpose. That is, funds are being appropriated and set aside for the increase of staff at Continental Army Headquarters and an increase in staff in the Adjutant General's office at state level to plan military support for CD. I want to assure you that there is a clear understanding in Washington in the military services and at every level of government that for CD to be effective, it has got to be the function of government, all the assets of civil government, and that military support can do no more than support that, but that military support can be an important feature and factor in limiting the damage and starting us on the road to recovery should any kind of attack ever take place. George Hastings has an enviable position which I don't have. I have to make funds available on a "Matching Funds" basis for things which are difficult to do -- that is, things that you know about. George has the nice position of being able to say "I've got some money to help you recover from this natural disaster" -- an enviable position and one which I wish I were in the same position. But Pm not, unfortu- nately. But I want you to know that we too think that natural disaster is an impor- tant part of life. I want to tell you about it. We do not think, nor will we ever propose, that the Federal government spend money on CD if its only justification is natural disaster activity. It makes no sense for us to have a-CD program which cannot create the capability to be a part of the defense damage - limiting structure. At the same time, we are perfectly clear that organization and operation to function effectively in a nuclear disaster needs effective operations in a natural disaster, and I think this is being proved every day around this country. In Florida, Ferris Bryant, in the hurricanes, there, said he could justify every cent of money he ever spent on CD as the result of the functioning of his organization in the hurricanes. They-didn't lose a single life. This is repeated clear across the country in Alaska, Ohio -- it doesn't make any difference where it is, and I am sure it is true here. So that we work very closely with the Office of Emergency Planning in all of our affairs and we are most particularly anxious that you understand that we do work together in natural disaster and any capability which you create to perform effec- tively is something we support one hundred percent. I think that is about what I have to say. I will be very glad to answer any questions that you have and I am sure it will cover some of the things that we might have left out. Questions and Answers: