Unearthing relics of the Cold War in Waterford and Norwich

In the early 1960s, the Federal Emergency Management Agency built a bomb shelter at the WNLC offices and radio broadcasting center at the end of Foster Road in Waterford.

The idea of the shelter was to allow the station to be able to broadcast if a nuclear attack was launched on eastern Connecticut.

“So they provided the station with the generator and the bomb shelter so that it could be essentially independent,” said Andy Russell, former vice president and general manager of Hall Communications, owner and operator six stations including 98.7 WNLC.

Today, emergency management officials are more focused on what they would do in the event of a radioactive leak at the Millstone Power Station and hold drill annually to practice their response.

But during the Cold War era ― from the late 1940s through 1991 ― the threat of a nuclear attack was a major concern for officials and civilians alike.

The universal triangular symbols designating a safe place for people to take shelter during a nuclear attack ― and the shelters themselves ― have all but disappeared, though a few of the Cold War relics remain visible in southeastern Connecticut.

“Although there may be some facilities within towns in Connecticut that still have the placards indicating they were fallout shelters, I am not aware of any shelters that are considered active that residents or government officials would use,” said Stephen Henrick, radiological emergency preparedness supervisor with the state Emergency Management & Homeland Security agency.

Russell in a recent phone interview recalled two Cold War-era bomb shelters that had been built at the company’s radio offices.

It was not uncommon practice during the Cold War, for stations to have their own shelters.

“There were, I think, about six or seven bomb shelters in the state of Connecticut at radio stations,” Russell said.

The WNLC shelter in Waterford was stocked with gas masks and rations of non-perishable food, including crackers and containers of water, he said. FEMA would come change them out from time to time, Russell said.

“It was like a very, very damp basement. Because it was underground,” said Russell. “It was not easy to maintain it ― as much as you did. There were mice and snakes and critters getting in there, even when it was sealed up.”

It was abandoned in 1998 following a fire and consolidation of Hall Communications’ offices.

That year, the 24-acre property, listed as 90 Foster Road, was sold to Shirley Hallberg. Six years later, it was transferred to a land trust under the names Kenneth Koos and Victor Hallberg.

The office’s foundation remains at the site, along with the bomb shelter. There are signs of an encampment there ― clothing, empty food containers and stoves for cooking.

The current WNLC office at 40 Cuprak Road in Norwich also had a Cold War-era bomb shelter, Russell said. It is now used as an office.

Russian nuclear test leads to hysteria

The year 1961 seemed to mark a turning point in public fears of a foreign attack on the area. The Day’s archive contains several accounts of efforts that were made in Waterford around that time.

In September 1961, Thomas Millard, a chief petty officer at the Naval Submarine Base in Groton, lectured 40 residents on nuclear preparedness at the Cohanzie Fire Department.

According to the news stories, Millard’s lecture included slides that showed the possible effects of a nuclear bomb being dropped in a specific area. Millard stressed the importance of having bomb shelters in this area, and urged that at least one family member be trained in first-aid skills.

A month after Millard’s lecture, the Soviets, under the direction Premier Nikita Khrushchev, tested a new megaton bomb, the Tsar Bomba. The bomb was the largest and most powerful nuclear weapon ever constructed.

It was flown over the Arctic Ocean on Oct. 30, 1961, and dropped on a remote island there. About two years ago, Russia declassified footage from the test, which shows a giant mushroom cloud formed in the sky post-detonation.

New London responds

In December 1961, Day Staff Writer John Foley reported New London Civil Defense Director Frank Kelly’s response to the test.

“That’s the one thing that did it,” Kelly said in the news story. “His (Khrushchev’s) tests and all his talk of megaton bombs has created a feeling of uneasiness in many people and they simply don’t know which way to turn.”

Kelly said there were two schools of thought on the shelters.

“One is that if a 75-megaton bomb is dropped somewhere around this area you won’t have to worry about surviving. In fact, you won’t have to worry about anything,” he said. “The other is that there is always a chance you might be able to escape the danger of radiation fallout if the blast is far enough away.”

“At any rate, there’s no harm in being prepared,” he said in calling for the City Council to consider building a $100,000 bomb shelter into a hill at Lake Konomoc, on the present-day Waterford-Montville line.

According to “An Illustrated History of Waterford Connecticut,” by Robert L. Bachman, students during this time “practiced cowering along interior school walls.”

For many, there was solace in the idea of placing thick concrete barriers between themselves and a nuclear blast.

Bachman writes that 1961 plans for an office building at 28 Rope Ferry Road, near the current day Community Center, included a fallout shelter for 300 people. Around the same time, a private shelter for six was dug at a home at 159 Rope Ferry Road.

The residents of the Rope Ferry Road home at the time, Peter Altieri and 18-year-old-daughter Sandra, agreed to lock themselves for two weeks in the shelter, which was 10 feet underground and made of reinforced steel and concrete.

The steel door was 3.5 inches thick. It featured its own pump and dug well for running water, three air blowers, a propane-powered generator, sink, fridge, stove and electric lights.

On Jan. 8, 1962, the head of the state’s civil defense department sealed them inside. They reemerged two weeks later, on Jan. 22, and reported they had been comfortable.

d.drainville@theday.com