Ever cautious Swiss drill for nuclear accident
Date: 12-Nov-01
Country: SWITZERLAND
Author: Michael Shields
In the works for more than a year, the exercise next week assumes that an atomic weapon contaminates the broad plain that stretches from Lake Geneva to Lake Constance, forcing millions into thousands of bomb shelters in houses and public buildings.
"This is absolutely the first time that we are practising for such a thing," Felix Blumer, spokesman for the National Alarm Centre, said last week.
With typical Swiss precision, its timing coincides perfectly with growing public concern that extremists could unleash biological, chemical or nuclear attacks that would outdo even the events of September 11.
"We could not have picked a better time," Blumer said.
Government officials, army officers, radiation experts and civil defence groups will conduct the computer-simulation drill on Monday and Tuesday from reinforced bunkers. Swiss citizens will not actually have to move underground.
"The assumption is there will be an accident with an atomic weapon that is so radioactive that practically the entire Swiss central plain has to go into the underground shelters. That of course would have wide-ranging consequences. All public life comes to a halt. People are not able to go to work," he said.
The point of the exercise is not so much getting people into the shelters, as getting them out again.
"How do you communicate that they should come out? Food will be contaminated. How do you deal with that? What can you eat, what can't you eat? All these things will be examined," Blumer said.
The drill underscores the importance Switzerland places on civil defence, even years after the Cold War.
Thousands of Swiss homes, hospitals and public structures have basement bomb shelters, thanks to a 1963 law requiring them in practically every new building.
In neutral Switzerland, a nation of 7.2 million that largely escaped the ravages of two world wars, telephone books carry instructions on what to do if an attack or accident dumps chemicals or radiation.
A siren system, regularly tested, warns the population to gather emergency rations and take cover in shelters now more widely used to store wine, vegetables, suitcases and furniture.
