Star-Bulletin
An air vent marks an underground fallout shelter.
A Keolu Hills resident is curious about a round, concrete thing that rears out of the Pali Highway median just before the road reaches School Street. She finally broke down and queried WatDat. "What is it -- some kinda turret?" she asks. Just your typical
bomb shelter
Kinda -- not. It is a manifestation of a peculiar, short-lived school of architecture that flourished in the 1950s. Note the too-broad protective roof, the chunky, reinforced concrete-and-rebar structure, the inset windows designed for snap-in filters and screens, the obvious suggestion that the bulk of the structure is firmly buried underground -- and it is.
This is just the thing to withstand an atomic blast, deadly radioactive fallout, and maybe even a few days of nuclear winter. For those who don't remember "duck and cover" as a childhood mantra, this is the air vent of a nuclear fallout shelter.
The original shelter, which still has its "Capacity: 124 Citizens" sign, now serves as an underpass between the halves of Hongwanji Mission School and the Buddhist temple on Pali Highway. The vent intrudes on the passageway about halfway across, a slight bump on the ceiling. Peering up the shaft, you can see a long-dead exhaust fan, the better to keep out sizzling radioactive dust.
"It's definitely a window on the past," said City Civil Defense worker Bill Horvath, disaster-preparedness boss.
Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin.
