Tuesday, April 08, 2008

This is a test of the emergency broadcasting system

If this had been real, I would have been screwed.

At 10 a.m. across the nation, an air raid... well, I'm going to call it an air raid siren drill, rather than an air raid drill, took place. It seems they're only testing the sirens themselves and not citizen readiness to an actual attack since no one I know received any actual "in case of an attack" instructions.

And frankly here on the settlement, there's precious little we could do.

Oh sure, we have bomb shelters. We have 4.. maybe 5.

Of the approximate 100 houses and additional 20 trailer homes, maybe 20 of these houses (all built after the first Gulf War) have actual 'safe rooms' built into the house. It's a room made of reinforced concrete with a heavy fire door and metal plates for the window.

The rest of us poor schlubs have to make use of the 4 (or 5) bomb shelters. Which in theory is great, but in practice would doom us.

2 of the shelters are used for the Gemachim here. One is packed with clothes and the other has clothes as well as whatever else is available for loan - dishes, tables, cribs, etc. 1 shelter is being used by the physiotherapist and the fourth is the 'music room' and hang-out for the kids. I have no idea where shelter number 5 is or if it even exists (I think it's in the center, where the original 20 trailers are). If it does exist, there's a better than good chance it's unusable as a bomb shelter.

I have no idea when the plumbing in any of them was last checked or if they even have serviceable toilets. They're certainly not stocked with emergency essentials or rations.

So yeah, they were testing the sirens.

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