Civil Defense Prepares City for Nuclear Attack

The Soviets have decided to wipe out the Harvard-MIT braintrust by dropping a 25-megaton nuclear warhead in Cambridge, but the CIA finds out in time to warn President Reagan, who notifies Governor King, who calls Chester E. Hallice.

Chester E. Hallice?

The head of Cambridge's Civil Defense program for the last 15 years, Captain Chester Hallice holds the responsibility for insuring the safety of Cambridge residents in time of emergency.

"Whatever type of emergency there might be, we have plans for it," he insists.

In the event of an actual nuclear attack, Cambridge residents would not be asked to leave their homes and huddle in any of the city's 300 20-year-old bomb shelters. They would be asked instead to leave their homes and travel 120 miles west to Greenfield, Mass.

That's because the Federal Emergency Management Agency is currently re-classifying Cambridge to a "high-risk area."

"This is where the brains are so we'd be one of the first to be hit," Hallice says, adding that bomb shelters would not do much good.

Asked how residents would be transported to Greenfield, Hallice says, "They're working on that now."

The classification of Cambridge as a high risk area is not the first major change in plans that Hallice has seen during the last two decades.

"Under Kennedy we stocked all of the shelters with proteins, carbohydrates, water and medicine," Hallice says, explaining that by 1975 most of the supplies had turned to powder.

That year, the shelters were cleaned out, and the remaining cookies were sent to Bangladesh.

"Most people think if a bomb is dropped there'll be nothing left," Hallice says. "But we have to take precautions because there will be survivors--there's no question about that."

While Cambridge residents have been waiting for the sirens and amplifiers placed strategically throughout the city to announce the coming of Armageddon, Hallice has been attending to disorders of a less imposing nature.

Lately, Hallice helped communicate vital information to Somerville authorities who were without an adequate radio system during the spill of toxic gases last year.

Before that, he managed part of the city's emergency program during the blizzard of 1978, handing out travel permits to residents.

But Hallice says the worst crisis he's ever seen came during the Harvard student protests of 1969, when he acted as a police captain as well as civil defense director.

"I saw blood on the streets," Hallice says, adding that some of the student protests "had a Russian tint."

In his capacity as police captain, Hallice gave the order to use tear gas for the first time on students. "I thought tear gas would be better than clubs," Hallice says, adding that "some guys like to hear the crack of a club on another guy's head."

With only a single full-time and one part-time employee under his command, Hallice says the tax cuts caused by Proposition 2 1/2 can't hurt the city's civil defense program "unless they decide to put me out of business altogether."

He considers that possibility highly unlikely because "you always need plans." The federal government currently funds 50 per cent of the Cambridge civil defense budget.

Planning for the past 15 years for an event he hopes will never occur doesn't bother Hallice, but he does worry that "the Soviets spend a billion where we spend a million."

Hallice says he's been aware of the "Soviet threat" since the time he graduated from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) academy in 1948, and adds that the civil defense conferences he's attended during the last 15 years have not changed his mind.

Touring underground defense facilities and meeting generals who "had the authority to push the red button and hit Moscow" has made a deep impression on Hallice. As he says, "Some of the things I've seen would frighten you."