RAID SHELTERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 November 1940, Page 3

RAID SHELTERS

NEED OF IMPROVEMENTS IN LONDON CONDITIONS IN SOME CASES APPALLING. DANGER OF EPIDEMICS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, November 25. Intolerable conditions in air-raid shelters are revealed in a leader in "The Times,” which, basing its strictures on the report of the commission which recently sat under Lord Horder, deplores the absence of a central coordinating authority to improve the situation. “The Times” says that specific shelters, notably in the East Encl, suffer from known defects and are the scenes of known scandals. They are consistently vilely overcrowded, they lack in some cases all sanitary provision and where such provision exists in a primitive form it lacks all privacy; they lack any reasonable degree of lighting and they also leak. They have mud floors. “Hundreds of people pass the greater part of their days under these conditions of stench, filth, vermin and darkness—conditions which have continued without improvement and sometimes with gradual deterioration foi- 10 weeks,” it continues.

“These appalling shelters are excep-; tional, but they constitute a sore : which, unless it is cured, may result in far widespread pollution of minds and bodies.” The leading article declares that' persons who are endangering the health and amenities of their fellow shelterers cannot be removed. Verminous adults cannot be cleansed, and also otherwise offensive persons cannot be compulsorily removed. There are cases of persons suffering from infectious diseases who have had to stay or have been allowed to stay for many hours in a sheltei’ before their removal could be arranged. “It seems, therefore, that there is not only divided and unco-ordinated responsibility but that also in some directions there is a lack of the necessary powers for any authority,” it comments.

The “Daily Mail,” in a leader, asks why, after the Minister of Health, Mr Macdonald, promised improvements in shelters, the conditions are unchanged in some tube stations. “They may be better insofar as the human animah has adapted himself but they are worse insofar as the season of infectious disease and lowered vitality is upon us,” it states. “Doctors have warned us that if influenza and diphtheria become rampant among the tube population they will produce unprecedented epidemics.”