Photo by Monique Schoenfeld, Town Crier
Joe Ahmadi shines a light into the first room of a fallout shelter built in 1962 in Los Altos. To the left is where the generator was stored and up against the far wall is where the heating and air conditioning unit was placed. Ahmadi is with CS2 Company, Inc., which has been contracted to dismantle the shelter.
Town Crier Staff Writer
Dismantling of Los Altos fallout shelter signifies end to Cold War connection
For years, it had maintained an almost anonymous presence beneath the front yard of a home on a quiet residential court in Los Altos. The longtime homeowners, John and Harolyn Crossman, rarely thought about it.
But an old 25-by-48-foot fallout shelter sitting about 15 feet below the surface was maintained by the city of Los Altos for years. The city had inherited its upkeep by default, due to the apathy of the surrounding residents for whom it was intended.
The city of Los Altos is giving an unceremonious goodbye to the Cold War era as a demolition crew is filling in what has been described as the largest fallout shelter in town.
Workers with CS2 Company, Inc., of San Jose were set to finish dismantling the 36-year-old shelter this week.
"It's been a long time coming," said Harolyn Crossman, as a small crew worked in her front yard. A door leading into the bunker is inconspicuously positioned near the street.
She and her husband, John, said they rarely ventured inside the shelter during their 24 years on Surrey Place. "It really wasn't bothering us," she said. "We almost forgot about it, even."
Its presence, however, bothered city officials, who saw the shelter as a liability issue. The council accepted CS2 Company's low bid of $37,448 to dismantle the structure, essentially taking out fixtures and filling the underground Quonset hut with gravel. The council agreed to dismantle it back in 1994 and allocated $35,000 in the 1994-95 capital improvement program to do so. But Bruce Bane, Los Altos Director of Public Works, said "various higher priority city projects and staff vacancies" delayed the work until now.
According to a 1994 staff report, the shelter had been deteriorating since its 1962 construction, during the height of the "red scare." According to Bane, Alex Braun of Los Altos Hills, the developer of the subdivision that includes Surrey Place, Stratford Place and a portion of Coronado Avenue, thought adding a fallout shelter would help sell the lots.
"In that era of the Cold War and nuclear threats, the federal government was actively promoting the construction of fallout shelters as part of the civil defense program," according to the staff report. "The shelters were planned for the survivors of a nuclear attack to live in during the period of nuclear fallout following a bomb explosion."
The shelter, approximately 12 feet high, and situated 3 feet below the ground surface, was equipped to sleep at least 96 people and included metal framework for canvas bunk beds. The framework could be taken apart by hand to create additional living space. Also included was a heating system, a fuel tank, water tanks, waste holding tanks, an air circulation system and an electrical generator. Entrance was through a "very heavy" steel plate door at the surface with a steel circular tunnel descending to the shelter. A set of steep, rickety wooden steps needed to be negotiated, and the rotting wood further motivated city officials to seek the shelter's dismantlement. There was a secondary emergency exit through a small vertical pipe, and this access was also designed for periscope use.
As a precursor to this month's dismantlement, the state Health Department ordered the city in 1992 to fill the diesel fuel tank with cement grout, stating it was not in compliance with state regulations.
Although the $42,550 shelter was completely paid for through an assessment district of the subdivision's homeowners over 20 years, the idea of residents stocking and maintaining the structure for their use never materialized.
"The city, by default, ended up with the responsibility for performing minimum maintenance to preserve the shelter," the staff report said. Over the years, Bane said, city crews would periodically inspect the shelter and fire up the generator to keep it in working condition. Eventually, the generator stopped functioning, and shelter "furnishings" such as the canvas bunks had to be removed because they were deteriorating.
"It was not meant to be the city's," Bane said. "It was intended to be a private facility, but nobody wanted to be responsible for it."
Furthermore, if by some chance, residents had to use it, they might have been out of luck. "If the bomb went off, they'd have to go to city hall to get the keys," Bane said.
Roy Dunnett, who was Los Altos mayor at the time the shelter was built, recalled that it was the only neighborhood shelter in Los Altos. "The neighborhood paid for it and the city gave permission," Dunnett said. "We (the city) had no objections - it wasn't going to cost us anything."
Attorney Jim Dozier, who worked with the city in the early 1960s, said there were other "private" fallout shelters built in those days, but nothing approaching the size of the one under Surrey Place.
Bane said closing the shelter eliminated the eventual possibility of it caving in.
"Someday, it would corrode and rust out, and somebody's going to drop 12 feet," he said. If left unfilled, the possibility remained that the Crossmans' front yard could have become "a big sinkhole," Bane said.
City officials asked the Crossmans about interest in their private use of the shelter. Again, the answer was no.
"We're glad they're filling it in," John Crossman said. "It's so depressing. It was a dumb thing to have been built."
When the Crossmans first bought the house in the early 1970s, John Crossman "looked out the window and saw this thing out in the lawn." It turned out to be the door to the fallout shelter. "What's that?" he asked the owner. "I was afraid you'd ask that," she said.
The city's dismantling the shelter also coincides with the removal of two public easements. When the CS2 crew finishes filling the space with gravel and sealing off the two entrances, Los Altos' own connection to the Cold War will be limited to memories.
However, despite the city's assertion that "there would appear to be no need for a fallout shelter based on the current state of world affairs," longtime Los Altos resident Alan Cranston, a former U.S. Senator, may take issue.
"The dangers (for nuclear holocaust) are graver now than they were during the Cold War," he said last week. "We've had several near-misses already."
Cranston, who currently chairs two disarmament groups - the Gorbachev Foundation and the State of the World Forum - said the fall of Communism and the former Soviet Union, and the reduction of nuclear weapons has by no means eliminated the threat. In fact, he said the prevailing lax attitudes about nuclear dangers may serve to heighten these dangers.
"People tend to think the Cold War is over - why worry?" Cranston said. But given the state of post-Communist Russia, he said the chances are greater for an "accidental nuclear exchange." He said Russia's poverty and the resulting dissension reaching scientists, military officials and others with nuclear access, could make them susceptible to selling weapons to dubious sources. Despite reduction and retargeting efforts, Cranston said the United States and Russia still have 13,000 warheads each, pointed at one another. As for retargeting, Cranston said it would take about 10 seconds to redirect a warhead to a desired target.
"The Bay Area is a major target because of Moffett (Field) and all the defense work and Silicon Valley," Cranston said.
However, having or not having a 1962 fallout shelter under such circumstances may be a non-issue, according to Cranston. "The fallout shelter is not apt to save many lives anyway," he said.
As for the Crossmans, they're ready to resume life without a bomb shelter under their front yard.
"I suppose now that it's filled, we'll get bombed," Harolyn Crossman said.