Word: fema
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...recent FEMA survey indicates that 95 percent of Greenfield's families would share their homes with Cambridge families--a major source of satisfaction for FEMA planners. They add that no one will be forced to comply with any of these plans at either end. "There is nothing that says you have to go, and nobody is going house-to-house to check," says Forbes...
State and local civil defense officials are convinced the evacuation can take place with "a planned and non-chaotic movement, Clanahan says. Douglas Forbes, FEMA's chief planner in Massachusetts, adds that the entire operation will take about 60 hours to complete...
Forbes explains that Cambridge residents driving to the western refuge will have little trouble with traffic jams because the plan calls for a flow of cars at about half the rate that a FEMA study indicates is normal at rush hour...
...FEMA officials downplay the significance of the council's rejection. "The planning process will simply not take place in Cambridge." Clanahan says. He adds that only 11 of 3000 cities participating in preparations have opposed the planning. Forbes describes the Cambridge reaction as "a political move." Councilors, he adds, "are not going to sit around at ground zero or near ground zero and watch those things...
Regardless of their plans, however, civil defense officials acknowledge that without enough advance notice, "if a nuclear bomb hits anywhere where it's supposed to hit we're all dead," as Capt. Chester Hallice, director of the Cambridge Civil Defense Agency, puts it. FEMA officials are banking, therefore, on the expectation that Soviet leaders would try to evacuate their population before any nuclear attack on the United States, alerting analysts here to sound the alarms. "The Soviets only have blast shelters for 25 percent of their urban population." Clanahan explained, "they would lose 100 million people they did not have...