In the basement of a school in the Nowa Huta district of the Polish city of Krakow, there is a Cold War shelter built in the ’50s that has never been modernized, just like the majority of the over 10,000 air-raid shelters in Poland, which the Warsaw government now wishes to expand and renovate to create a so-called “underground shield,” reports the EFE agency on Wednesday, quoted by Agerpres.
In the courtyard, along the corridors and on the stairs of that school, the signs directing to the shelter that has an area of about 140 square meters are still present. It is still equipped with the same armored door, the ventilation system, and even the same manual water purification machine installed about 70 years ago. In the Nowa Huta district, there are over 250 shelters built under apartment blocks and public buildings.
While Russian drones and missiles attack neighboring Ukraine and some have accidentally entered Polish airspace, this country has launched an emergency plan for the modernization and expansion of its network of civilian shelters.
A psychologist from Krakow, Kamila Boguszewska, confesses that in the last year she has noticed a major anxiety among her patients due to the fear of a potential war.
According to the firefighters’ data, there are currently 85,739 shelters in Poland, but the vast majority are ‘temporary shelters’, that is, private basements and garages, the number of ‘high protection shelters’ being only 1,903, while another 8,719 shelters are considered to offer a certain degree of protection.
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