EAST POINT, Ga. — There’s no reason to believe the US will get directly involved in the Ukraine conflict, but a lot of people have been thinking back to the cold war when fallout shelters became common across the country.
They’re harder to find these days, but we discovered a school that has one in south Fulton County.
The shelter is at Kipp South Fulton Academy, a charter school in East Point.
The Cold War history is in the basement. The shelter is down a flight of stairs on the bottom floor, on the other side of a locked steel door.
Principal Brandom Jones showed Channel 2′s Berndt Petersen the relic of the cold war, frozen in time.
“It’s the only one of its kind that I’ve ever come across,” Jones said. “We’ve called this the bomb shelter for as long as I’ve been here.”
The school, originally named East Point Elementary when it was built in 1952, was designed to maintain segregation.
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And like many schools of the time, included a fallout shelter.
A sign that used to be on the building is gone, but the blueprints are still in the cellar.
The very large space is now used for storage.
Because the purpose has changed, Jones said you usually don’t think about what the room was for.
“When you’re engaging kids and learning about the history and stop to think about what that time felt like, you realize how special this place is,” Jones said.
Petersen asked the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency how many active fallout shelters there are in the state — if any.
A spokesperson told Petersen they’ve never kept track of that.
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