Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 1942. VULNERABILITY AND SHELTERS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 June 1942, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 1942. VULNERABILITY AND SHELTERS.

AN official intimation, mentioned at yesterday’s meeting of: the Wairarapa Hospital Board, that Masterton is regarded as a vulnerable area, should make an end of local controversies on the subject of raid shelters and other matters which have been smouldering, and at times flaring up a little, for a good many weeks past. Something more than a mere ruling that a oiven area is vulnerable—even though the ruling be that of the Chiefs of Staff —would be needed, it is true, to regularise and standardise the raid shelter position as a whole. As far as may be judged from casual and incomplete observation, not many householders in Masterton are troubling to dig slit trenches m their front lawns or back gardens. For the time being the authorities, national as well as local, apparently are leaving this matter to the discretion of individual citizens. It may be doubted whether the rather general inclination to ignore the danger of enemy air raids, or to trust to luck, is consistent with common sense. Certainly the danger exists that almost anv part of the Dominion may be raided from the air or otherwise. In any case, some precautions and safeguards most decidedly should be instituted without delay. Immediate measures ought to be taken, for instance, for the protection of children in schools, by the digging of trenches or the construction of better shelters, such as tunnels dug in hillsides, where that is feasible. A suggestion, of which something has been heard —that in the event of a raid alarm an endeavour should be made to get school children to their homes—can only be regarded as hopelessly futile or worse. Unless the- alarm were given well in advance of any bomb dropping—a course of events by no means to be counted upon—an attempt to take or send children from a school to their homes might easily amount to exposing them to a maximum danger of death or injury. It should be easy to agree that protective shelter should be provided forthwith in or very near to all school grounds, particularly in areas classed as vulnerable. Special precautions and safeguards evidently should be instituted also by hospital boards ■whose hospitals and other establishments are situated in vulnerable areas. The Wairarapa Hospital Board did the right thing, at its meeting yesterday, in deciding to ascertain from the Health Department exactly what its obligations are in this particular. Another matter of considerable importance affected by the declaration of vulnerable areas is that of the organised evacuation of centres of population attacked or threatened with attack. Obviously the movement of large numbers of people from one vulnerable area to another should be avoided. Self-evident as it is, this point is worth emphasising because, in the preparation and shaping of official evacuation schemes, it has, at times, been'overlooked completely. There is no need and no excuse for a panicky approach to the question of taking precautions against the danger of attack from the air. The occasion calls simply for a calm and common sense consideration of what ought to be done in view of the possible dangers by which the Dominion is' confronted. The Prime Minister (Mr Fraser) observed at the annual meeting of the New Zealand Returned Services’ Association yesterday that: “Any person who imagined that there was immunity from attack in New Zealand was living in a fool’s paradise.” It is not, of course, certain that the Dominion will be attacked, but assuredly there is no guarantee that it will not be raided, or attacked in some more purposeful fashion.