Memorandum to Industry (1966)

for [Music] hello hello anybody home oh hello Mr Keller oh hi Maggie here let me take your bag all right things have been fairly quiet while you've been away but I've managed to take care of a few args around the office what kind of a welcome is that I expected to see banners waving welcome home Steve killer where are they okay you didn't expect me back till tomorrow I'll come back tomorrow okay you win welcome home Steve Keller that's more like it no actually it really is nice to have you back I'm getting sick and tired of those odds and ends the president of the company know I'm back I told him you were coming in this morning so he went ahead and scheduled a meeting at 5 the Chairman's going to be there plus one or two other board members plus the whole bunch from Senior Management oh that's just great that means I've got half a day to get up a report for the meeting well you better sharpen pencils Maggie oh before you do would you uh phone to have some lunch set up please I've been away for almost a month I got enough material here to write a book two books and they give me half a day to write it a two ham and swiss cheese sandwiches Please Mr Keller's office room 200 why' you tell them I was coming back today well he asked me so I told him some secretary you're fired not until we get that report do you want butter on your sandwich no mayonnaise did you hear what I said yes I'm fired and you want mayonnaise now how do you want to start this report memorandum uh yes uh memorandum from Steve Keller to corporate management and board of directors subject civil defense and industry's role in no no cut that keep it simple memorandum to Industry subject civil defense all right one month ago I was instructed by the president of our company to prepare this report on Industrial civil defense that is on industry's role in the National civil defense program with a special emphasis on our own industry my job was to find out what's going on in other Industries and to collect firsthand information to serve as the basis of my recommendations for our own company civil defense program now the key question I'll try to answer in this report is why so many companies are involved in civil defense in the first place that is what motives compel them to spend money and man hours on Industrial civil defense programs in every case the impetus for action has come from the top from the men who are critically responsible to their stockholders for running the company from the board of directors and corporate presidents protect your assets that's an order and your number one asset is your people got all that why don't you go right into your field trip okay good in West Point Georgia I discussed the subject of a company's responsibility for its employees its human assets with Joseph laner chairman of West Point peo lanir is keenly aware of the leadership role his company must assume in all aspects of community life not simply the one that concerns us here Steve we're in the textile business you see use a lot of cotton yeah I see that been at it a long time since 1880 we've grown locally from a very small concern with less than 200 employees to about 7,000 out of a total employment situation of uh some 18,000 we are very proud of our employees we try to provide good leadership on the job while we want uh good strong management we we try to be helpful and we uh cooperate in the very best of schools and uh churches recreational life and uh we think that the leadership that we try to give to our employees is appreciated uh how did you go about setting up the whole civil defense program for your organization well with full support of our board of directors and with the uh enthusiastic cooperation of our managers an organization within the company was formed and bar was appointed company coordinator I suppose that he's the man I should see to fill me in on details you'll be glad to show you around Steve look like you've got a job just about like I had several years ago when westborne Manufacturing Company launched into their civil defense program we had had the Army Engineers come in and make a survey of our buildings and I'm suppose that they have probably made a similar survey of your facilities that not they've been after several of their surveys then we came to the conclusion that we have a potential of shelter space in our community for the entire population Bob what do you have going on here got a building Edition going on right here now Steve and we have just air conditioned this Mill and in doing so we have ricked up the windows and this has given us a great many additional spaces this as you see is a pretty large room house about 2,000 people and we've taken into account the fact that the Looms are going to take up space [Applause] [Music] [Applause] uh what's that other smaller tank there Bob smaller tank is a tank that's in parallel with the big tank and the two FL together on the system and serve the the mill requirements there well in an emergency can this uh water be drunk well right now it's not processed for that purpose but you could use it we would use it that's right we would to add a little chlorine to it to make it safe from any bacteriological standpoint but it would not be a contaminated water in that it's protected by the cover on the top from any Fallout or radiation how many gallons you have in these tanks it' be about 500,000 gallons that would be available at any time besides measuring the intensity of radiation gentlemen you need to know if you have people entering your shelter who are contaminated meaning do they contain fall out on the clothing the head the shoes any sh Draper who is our County civil defense coordinator and he's certainly the fell you want to see back in your your place because he can give tremendous help to you right now he's conducting a shelter managing School these fellas you see here will be the shelter managers in our shelters they'll be the sole Authority these fellas as you heard them say will will'll be able to say who can come into the shelter they're contaminated or not they must be cleaned up they'll say how what kind of conduct the person must have stay in the shelter it's a very important position uh how many men have been trained for that job we' trained about 50 of these people who will be assigned to our very shelters now helping shelter up here is Frank manderson who is the state director of civil defense and these gentlemen on his staff are aiding Shelton in the conducting of these various training sessions which are very helpful later on Shelton will take you down and show you our our Control Center and some of the activities down in the mill Jim I'd like you to meet Steve Kell how you do Jim to nice to meet you Jim Steve is sent here from another company set up his own civil defense program he's looking over ours Jim here is our civil defense Communications officer this your regular job oh no I'm Chief electrician in the plane is a regular job you volunteer for this no Sheron drafted me how do you happen to choose you well I have some experience with radio work uh in the plan and outside too you have other can this oh yeah we have around 50 people that has been trained by Sheldon to operate this equipment in an emergency well it looks very good the whole setup thank you a lot thanks for your time Jim thank you I'm very much impressed by what they've done at West Point a company that employs almost half the working population in the community has to assume at least that much responsibility if not more they've done it here in a short time they will reach their goal of providing shelter for every man woman and child in six chattah huchi Valley mil towns they received a lot of help from the local civil defense office setting up a training program finding and stocking their shelters and providing technical assistance when it was needed in the view of West Point manufacturing the effort is more than worth it Bob o considers the entire operation a kind of insurance policy not the kind that pays off your survivors but the sort of insurance that guarantees as far as possible that you will survive you'll be your own beneficiary That's What I Call Insurance I hope I making myself clear the point I've got to get across here is that in order to make a civil defense program work we've got to take a look at our resources find the hidden talent among our own employees like that radio man and put them the work but they'll really be useful all right now let's get back to the total program now take this shelters and underline that okay ideally the place to begin is from the ground up take IBM for example okay I visited IBM's new corporate headquarters in Arman New York about 40 mil north of the city Ed odono spoke about the company's vast civil defense program what were some of the considerations that prompted IBM to relocate from Manhattan up here in armont oh we thought of a number of things uh Steve the pleasant surroundings themselves and convenient commuting and just a more pleasant family life for everybody these were some of the ation uh can you tell me what is general company policy on shelters well basically we believe in shelters uh in providing Fallout shelters for the uh most employees in every reasonable way we've cooperated with the government program on identifying existing space licensing them and stocking them with supplies uh in this way we've uh found over 30,000 shelter spaces and then with what we've constructed ourselves in new buildings uh we have well over 37,000 and very shortly we'll have over 45,000 well Steve let me take you downstairs into the shelter area and I'll show you how we button it up and I think you'll find it interesting and perhaps some things you can use in your planning Steve you might be interested in our program generally we've always called it the emergency planning program we've always always gone on the theory that we should plan for everyday emergencies tornadoes floods hurricanes perhaps disasters airplane crashes almost anything like that then we build up to civil defense in our shelter program so the point I'm making here is that we base it on the everyday planning for any kind of emergency and then we gradually get to the point of shelter construction and all other aspects of civil defense IBM's Armon shelter is one of the finest examples of good design and sensible planning a series of concealed doors swing out to close off the shelter area the doors themselves are either lead lined where necessary or fire resistant blocking off a shelter area large enough to house all the employees in the building but most important the enclosed area is all Dual Purpose space used on a day-to-day basis now for normal Building Services that would also be needed for the shelter the kitchen Medical Department Store rooms for food emergency generator Communications there is no wasted space it's a design technique called slanting the office of civil defense helped the IBM Architects work out the det TS see now we're thinking about building a new plant in Denver aren't we I'll make a big note here Maggie Denver new shelter slanting sounds like you spent the entire month looking at shelters well not exactly shelters are only part of the story take this Maggie after leaving IBM the next stop was Iron Mountain near Hudson New York a short drive from aubony the president of Iron Mountain Storage Company is Doug Walker the object here was to find out all I could about the storage of Vital Records a part of civil defense that concerns every company very beautiful beautiful area they just finished the cherries and now they're harvesting the U pears but I think your number one job is to learn all your possibly can about record storage is that right that's why I'm here yeah well I think you've come to the right spot we have to day hundreds and hundreds of top American corporations storing their Vital Records underground here at Iron Mountain the site you've chosen actually was naturally adapted for your purposes wasn't it yes yes one of the outstanding thoughts about this cave here and I want you to remember please Steve it's frightfully important it's not a hole in the ground a hole in the ground everything runs in Iron Mountain is actually a mountain and you drive straight into it so that when it rains and snows and so when there's Fallout blowing around it sheds it in uh the case of water and moisture while hole in the ground everything runs in we do not have a humidity problem with Iron Mountain we have a natural humidity of around oh it could be 60% we air condition the building and bring that down around 45 to 50 which is about right so I understand that in addition to record storage some companies have alternate headquarters here that is completely right yes completely right boardroom sleeping accommodation kitchen facility where they can stay for 30 days deep you mean the works the works yeah [Music] it sheer size is absolutely staggering endless corridors running along the route of the original excavations new corridors chiseled or blasted out of the solid rock interrupted by one steel door after another each protecting a vault of critical records of a drug company a bank a university a manufacturer an investment company a life insurance company or even the private belongings of an eccentric collector it all adds up to almost 600,000 Square ft of Flor floor space the equivalent of a 30-story [Music] building Iron Mountain is only one of many record storage companies located throughout the country record storage makes a lot of sense after all corporate records represent the corporate memory let's think for a moment what would happen if our company lost its records but a record storage center must have more than storage space it must also have the means of processing vital records for storage and a way of retrieving those records whether they are magnetic tapes microfilms aperture cards or hard copy documents these are working records a company may need at a moment's notice records stored by private companies are frequently pulled out of the Vault and sent back to the home office to meet some minor your [Music] emergency uh how many people can you sleep here we can sleep 66 actually it's broken down this way your dormit trees accommodate 22 people uh male and female but then on a 24-hour day this program is set up on three eight hour shifts so you multiply three by 22 and you have 66 people now you have exactly the same programming in your kitchen let me show you around the rest but you haven't seen anything yet the Shell Oil Company actually has a complete office set up in Iron Mountain that can be activated in a matter of hours alternate headquarters for a complex company Mr Chad French of Standard Oil New Jersey and egg Rob of Shell Oil gave me some background on the hows and wise you know these are very comfortable Quarters here I don't get any feeling of um being confined or the fact that we're in the middle of a mountain with all this AA above us some w we have a marvelous view of the Hudson River how about that you you pull that on all your guests here well that's one of shell company's standard jokes in our little facility here no we're glad that you do not feel that you're confined we tried to make it a livable quarters because actually people are going to live here and maybe under strained conditions so we hope it'll be homey and they can feel relaxed and and this is what the tried to do now how is it that your company happened to build at this specific location shell companies have had our Vital record stored in this area in this mine actually for since 1953 and this made it logical for us to put our alternate headquarters for the corporation our head office at the same place in other words you don't just use this as an emergency facilities as we've talked whether no we would plan to use it for some meetings of uh training our people about about our emergency planning program we might have some executive meetings up here well we might even have some technical meetings up here we'll make use of it by one hook or another this problem of record storage is something we haven't thought about too seriously I wouldn't be surprised if we kept them in the basement of this building I think we store our records in a warehouse on the other side of town that's not much better all I take this we must get our Vital Records out of the city and set up the files so they can be utilized in a hurry if we have to and we must start thinking about creating an emergency headquarters that we can use as an alternate Operating Center if we have to exactly if we have to okay take this also Western Electric for example uses the basement of its Training Center in New Jersey as their alternate corporate headquarters according to AL molesini Western Electric is deeply committed to Industrial defense in all its aspects at the present we have shelter space for roughly 2third of our employees we are continuously looking for additional shelter space see we're below ground now aren't we yes we are 4 and2 ft below the ground level with the building on top this affords a protection factor of in ESS of 1,000 that's terrific isn't it it has to be because this is our emergency corporate headquarters and damage Assessment Center oh I see in other words this is the brain center for the whole Corporation in event of any disaster that's true because in the New York headquarters became inaccessible then the executives would report to this area we can provide facilities for 100 people for a period of a 2 we stay we have a 1500 gon water tank in which we change the water every 2 months for freshness here in our supply room we have all the things required for the two weeks stay radiological monitoring instruments I'm sure you have seen many of these food blankets even manuals we have written manuals emergency corporate headquarters instruction firefighting radiological monitoring we have also gone so far as to write up a management succession list where are those names kept this list is kept in our record storage center on the very close security Western electric emergency headquarters thank you Los Angeles one moment please Weston electric has 53 m major plant locations throughout the United States this is excellent defensively because of plant dispersal however it creates a major Communications problem the damage assessment room receives information pertaining to physical plant damage and injury to Personnel the people sitting at the desk in front of us receive this information pass it on to the plotter at the map and he places this information on the map the executive officers then have this information available to them so that they can start thinking in terms of normal business operations after the attack period is over are you tied in with the local civil defense uh units around here yes we have a red phone in the communications room what do you do if phones are knocked out we have backup radio K2 BDA K2 BDA this is wb2 HPD call K2 BDA K2 BDA this is an emergency wb2 Hotel Papa Delta calling an over sounds like Western Electric has thought of just about everything well after all they are in the telephone business on the other hand we don't have anything that elaborate in this company it's getting late we we up any of time don't worry all right we've got to expand and improve our present communication set setup and we must train people to use it in almost every industry you need special training for special problems take the steel business for example this is Jones and Lain steel corporation's largest steel mill we extend for five miles along the western Bank of the Ohio River here and at this particular plant we employ about 14,000 people I think it's interesting too Steve to know that uh we had safety long before we had an industrial defense program we had PL protection and we had firefighting so the industrial defense program is simply coordinating the efforts of these Service uh agencies into one common cause and that is to fight a disaster each uh one knows exactly what his function is to be and if there is a disaster uh they are working together for one purpose and that is to save life and property we have shelters throughout this entire plant for most of our employees these shelters have been stocked with the federal supplies under the federal marking and stocking program and uh we can keep these people in the shelter areas for approximately two weeks we have the food the water first aid supplies radiological instruments and uh the employees know exactly where they are to go in the event uh alert is sounded shutting down a steel mill in a crisis is not simply a matter of throwing a switch the violent heat would cause explosive damage the plant and machinery would be crippled without a precisely engineered and effectively managed shutdown procedure we Face almost exactly the same situation some of our own plants so you can appreciate the gravity of jnl's problem in some phases of Steel making the shutdown operation takes several days in others it can be a matter of minutes so depending on the warning Time Each worker knows exactly what he can do and what he should do to protect life and property from the inevitable damage of a sudden work stoppage according to a plan a plan that's been devised with the same precision and care they use to gauge the accuracy of their Heats and the thickness of their Steel in dick whan's view whether or not this shutdown plan will work is principally a matter of training practice and drill red thank you Sergeant the industrial defense coordinator wants to conduct a red alert test now let's go George you call the operator I'll call Works manager Keller Sergeant fesi just received word on Red Alert test we have your permission to shut the plant down okay thank you hit the button George here I'll call the Red Alert test is basically a check of communications that would alert all parts of the company start Sirens direct the employees to shelter shut down the plants and a thousand other things in their emergency plans J&L is constantly updating its Communication System training here also includes the kind of medical and first aid courses that we have given our employees approximately 90% of jnl's employees have completed the five courses given by the Red Cross and many are now enrolled in medical self-help training during a national emergency these same skills would become part of the civil defense operation J&L has its own ambulances and special equipment and at their larger plants their own hospitals along with a staff of doctors and nurses 24 hours a day but the emergency plan doesn't stop here it extends Beyond Jones and llin itself to include other companies in the area that have pulled their equipment and people their supplies ambulances heavy equipment and trained staff to assist each other and the communities around them in a major disaster it's called Mutual Aid skinny Harris explained it this way the city of Pittsburgh is uh surrounded with a network of waterways such as the alany river meeting the manong gala river right at the the Gateway Center and as you probably know the uh heavy industry is situated along the river banks what would happen if your Bridges were knocked out and say roads blocked up if the roads and uh bridges are out of uh use for some reason or other then uh naturally we have to look to the waterways to supply those who need the uh equipment and materials by the way of boats and barges moving them back and forth and up and down the river this is an informal agreement at the present time we have some uh 20 members to the association namely bab Cox and Noel Cox MacIntosh and hfil uh St Joe lead and Westinghouse and many others I recommend that our company follow the example set by Jones and llin and a lot of other companies throughout the country and organize a mutual Aid association with companies around us for the Practical truth is is we would never have enough equipment to handle a full-blown disaster well I just about does it oh I want to add one more paragraph to wrap it up I have all the books and pamphlets I need to fill in all the details I just want to say this the first thing we must do is appoint a company civil defense coordinator and give him your full support he should attend the office of civil defense industrial management course and then start working on a company civil defense plan a disaster Bible which will cover the complete spectrum of company Emergency Operations as I've outlined in this report WR down to the Last Detail okay that does it better start typing it up Maggie oh and listen uh I want you with me at the meeting tonight with all my notes I'll buy you [Music] [Music] [Music]