Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/1497523
at the design and construction stages. The protective building needs to be designed in compliance with protection and sealing-off rules. Simplifying, the above boils down to the definition of areas that can be designated as external walls, where protection and sealing off would be provided. The same goes for special purpose equipment, the ability to maintain overpressure inside, and total separation from the outside environment, namely, access to air, water, and wastewater systems, and so on, must be cut within the facility. That allows for ensuring complete safety for those inside, protecting them from the listed threats. The sealing-off condition, apart from sealing off the structure and presence of special- purpose equipment, also demands for the shelter to remain in good technical condition. Old gaskets, cable holes in the external walls, rusty doors, or removed ventilation and filtering hardware shall not be the case here. Unfortunately, the Polish reality is entirely different. Most of the Polish protective structures, also referred to as shelters, come in a form of hideouts or shelters created during the Polish People's Republic era, under public utility buildings or workplaces. They suffer from a lack of completeness and technical decomposition. The Polish shelters usually feature doors eaten by rust, destroyed or damaged escape routes, walls and ceilings penetrated by cables and pipes, or humid and dirty interiors. The lack of filters and ventilation systems, damaged vents, and valves is usually a standard here. Other equipment is also damaged. Considering the level of deterioration of the technical condition, we cannot speak of the shelters being sealed off. Thus, sites as such cannot be viewed as valuable shelters. Another type of shelters present in Poland comes in a form of air- raid trenches - these are common, especially in the areas that used to be controlled by Germany. The technical status of those, with some exceptions though, remains highly questionable. The facilities have a protective role just theoretically. They are entered into the registries of air raid shelters by the local authority organs that still keep such registries alive. The fact is that in Poland we experience a duality in the domain of shelter structures, visible in the stance adopted by the local authorities. First, as no regulations exist (which is ANALYSIS