Education: Underground School

In the growing oil-and-beef city of Artesia, N. Mex., where the temperature sometimes hits 100° in October, citizens have long become used to windowless schools. It helps air conditioning, and the children approve. But last week Artesia* announced an even more singular design. Except for the flagpole, Abo Elementary school will be entirely underground—apparently the first such nuclear-age school in the U.S. Says Architect Frank Standhardt: “I consider my profession derelict on civil defense. We’ve had ten years of grace and done nothing about it.”

Asked to estimate the price of an underground school, Standhardt found it would cost only about 10% more than a building above ground. Civil defense officials offered to make up the difference. Artesians had no objections: their houses seldom have basements, and the city (pop. 11,939) has no public buildings suitable for shelter. Artesia is perhaps more mindful of the nuclear age than most cities, being 40 miles from the missile pads of Roswell and 230 miles from Los Alamos.

Everything about Abo School will have a dual function. Designed for 540 children, it will readily shelter 2,000 persons. Flush with the ground, the 18-in. concrete roof will be a basketball court and a fallout filter. The two wells used for air conditioners can supply emergency drinking water. The lunch room will be stocked with a 14-day food supply, and cupboards throughout the 18-classroom building will contain 970 cots. Abo will also have a two-way radio, underground phone lines, radiation-measuring instruments, provisions for fire fighting, garbage disposal and a morgue.

Is Artesia unduly apprehensive? Not at all, says Mrs. C. P. Bunch, president of the Board of Education. She calls the underground school “more a matter of insurance than fear,” hopes eventually to build shelters for all of Artesia’s 4,600 school children. “These shelters have an important psychological value,” says Mrs. Bunch. “We must build up the will to resist. America’s morale will go down if we feel helpless. Let’s teach our children that we can protect ourselves and survive.”

*One of five U.S. towns so named by parched settlers for the artesian wells that sustain them. The others are in Arizona, California, Colorado, Mississippi.