Four decades after the United States feared a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union, the signs of the era linger. Today, the signs that illustrate the presence of a fallout shelter in many of the campus buildings such as the Science and Engineering Building, the library and the gym still exist.
“The campus stadium was the first thing built in 1956. Soon after, the rest of the campus began to take shape” said Bakersfield College president William Andrews.
“The fallout shelters were constructed along with the campus due to the scare of a nuclear bomb attack.”
However, according to Robert Day, director of maintenance, “the fallout shelters are now more of equipment rooms than anything else.”
The once-labeled “fallout shelters” hold anything from air conditioners and boilers to air handlers, according to Day.
The equipment rooms also serve as a “cable holding” room, where cables run throughout the campus as an electrical feed system. Telephone lines that go underneath the campus also exist. The fallout shelters run underneath 80 percent of the campus and are all connected by underground tunnels.
According to Day, the equipment rooms are “not designated as fallout shelters” in case of an emergency, due to the high voltage of the equipment stored in them.
Also, Day is currently looking into the process of having the fallout shelters’ signs removed from the campus buildings and the evacuation maps placed around the campus. In case of an emergency, Andrews said the evacuation plans, posted all over the campus, are to “get people away from the buildings” and into safer areas. He also added that the fallout shelter signs simply haven’t been “removed.”
Mildred Lavato, vice president of student learning, who is also the director of the BC Emergency Response Team, said the first response guidelines are “being rewritten” and a new training session is scheduled for October.
The BC Emergency Response Team, according to the BC Emergency Response and Evacuation Plan manual, is made up of administrators and faculty members. In each building on campus, there is a first responder, second responder and an administrator in charge of evacuating certain areas of the campus in case of an emergency.
The training session that is supposed to last four hours is in part a review in regard to “bomb threats, terrorist attacks, earthquakes and a review of a faculty plan,” said Lavato.
With regard to the “fallout shelters,” Lavato said the “facilities are being inspected.”