The Blitz

[megan]

The thread is prompted by the Grenfell Tower Fire, and the aftermath of accommodating survivors. The authorities are coming in for something of a shellacking over their response.

My question is, how did the authorities cope with the many who were bombed out. Housing, aid, feeding etc. Must have many times the number of Grenfell following a raid looking for succour.

[Load Toad]

Well, apart from children having been already evacuated, there was everything from food vans to temporary accommodation, the rationing programme guaranteeing adequate healthy food & number of calories, provision of shelters, use of tube for deep shelters. Then the actions of the Red Cross & Sally Army. There had been planning for all this before the war, the Civil Service had geared up for providing for the civilian population and expected higher casualties anyway as the enemy was expected to use poison gas too.

But there were complaints, lack of shelters...the effect on the poor being greater than the rich (poor housing being near factories & ports)...

Civilans that could moved out of London, some to the dispersed factories.


It certainly wasn't all good - but Grenfell is bloody criminal.

[Shackman]

We had a system known as Civil Defence, which could (and frequently did) coordinate disaster relief and provided just the joined up response using all available sources that was (is still) needed. Their remit was 'to take control' and provide all the things that appear to be lacking now, but equally they were almost all volunteers. The original reason for the formation was the threat of war but it was unfortunately disbanded in the late 60's (no doubt on cost grounds), but you only have to visit other countries to see the system in operation. Canada is well worth a mention where I saw it working first hand in the aftermath of a large forest fire just a few years ago; within a few hours of a call a disaster HQ was set up in school buildings, people knew where to go and get whatever assistance was required and the whole system worked together.
Here now we have no joined up coordination and on the survivors side no one really knows where to go or who to talk to, whilst those at the top seem to have little idea of what resources are needed because they have no experience.
It is very easy for political parties (of all persuasions) to cast stones at 'the other lot', and the blame game just causes more frustration and hurt for the survivors. Maybe we need something like CD back again - not necessarily in the strength of its heyday (some 330,00) but perhaps small teams who could be called out/called in at short notice with the expertise and authority to coordinate the response to large scale emergencies. Unfortunately Grenfell is probably not the last major disaster we will suffer, but it has shown the inadequacies of 'the system'.

[Heathrow Harry]

Civil Defence became tied into the Atomic warfare issue - by 1968 it was expensive and seen as useless against an H Bomb attack

When they shut it down nobody was thinking of the sort of issues that we now suffer from - the Emergency Services did what they could and there used to be much stronger (and expensive) Local Authorities who had access to large amounts of social housing etc

As Shackman says there is little co-ordination - lots of charities wade in but they often overlap and they aren't co-ordinated

[BEagle]

We were still flying annual 'civil defence' weeks with fire and police officers at University Air Squadrons in the 1990s - and great fun it was too. Convoy control (radio out) was the sport of kings, but the average passenger could only stand a couple of minutes before turning green and reaching for the bag...

Unfortunately some grown-up did some delving and found that the requirement had never been terminated when the rest of the CD system had been binned.

So it stopped. What a shame, I thoroughly enjoyed the licensed hooliganism of chasing round the Cotswolds navigating on a 50 thou map at 250' with various amiable coppers and firies!

[Wander00]

I have thought from the start that this was a (sad) case where Military Aid to the Civil Power would have been entirely appropriate, and would have gone a long way towards easing the plight of those displaced from their homes.