Volunteers Dismantle Lorton Bunker

Many years ago, the threat of nuclear war spurred the US Government to build several bunkers around the country that would not only protect government officials, but also provide the latest equipment so that communication would be possible. The Comfort Inn Gunston Corner is located one mile from the bunker built amid the rolling hills of Lorton, Virginia. Just off I-95 at exit 163, the hotel is easy to find and it takes just a few minutes to get back onto the highway. We offer low weekend rates and complimentary deluxe continental breakfast. Call us at 703-643-3100 to make reservations.


Cold War Museum volunteers dismantle civil defense bunker closed for decades.
By Amber Healy
The Connections Newspaper


The door to the brick building is propped open, but only a little sunlight breaks into the musty-smelling building, filled with papers, equipment and maps from decades gone by.
Without electricity inside, the volunteers rely on a single diesel-powered generator and daisy-chained extension cords attached to halogen lanterns and hanging light bulbs to illuminate the darkened rooms. No electricity means no air conditioning and with three days of tagging items for storage and putting them into boxes, they've got their work cut out.
Gary Powers, founder and chair of the Cold War Museum, and a group of six volunteers embarked on a seemingly insurmountable challenge of tagging, cataloging and boxing up items left behind in an old civil defense bunker hidden in what used to be the juvenile detention area of the former Lorton prison.
"Four of five years ago we found out this place existed," said Powers, trying to position a halogen lantern inside the bunker's main room to get a better view of its contents.
Against a far wall of the main room, 12 identical communications booths were set up for a range of offices, from the D.C. Department of Corrections and the National Park Authority to Washington Electric and Gas and the highway department. The booths, complete with microphones and what could be considered antique radio equipment, would have been used to alert the agencies in the event of a nuclear attack, Powers said.
Located in Lorton, 30 miles from Washington, the bunker would have been a makeshift home for any government official in the area that needed shelter during a nuclear attack, Powers explained.

AFTER FAIRFAX COUNTY officials notified Powers about the bunker, he asked about preserving the contents of the bunker.
"The District of Columbia Emergency Management Agency operated out of the bunker in the 1960s and 1970s, and they were in charge of this bunker until 1994 when it closed down," he said. The EMA is still in operation in Washington, but most of the duties it performed during the Cold War era are now the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security, Powers said.
Four years ago, the county donated all the equipment and paperwork left in the bunker to Powers and the Cold War Museum, under the pretense that they would have to package it up and move it to storage one day. Earlier this year, Powers was notified that the site had to be cleared by Sept. 1, so on Friday, July 28, Powers and his volunteers began their dusty work. Inside, the bunker is a treasure trove of Cold War-era intelligence, maps, communications equipment, even census records for the D.C. area from the 1960s.
Tables covered in plastic remained littered with radiation fallout maps and stacks of what could have been classified information. The walls are covered in maps outlining the Metro system in its early stages, the sewer and gas lines under Washington, so if an attack occurred, the officers working in the bunker could easily and quickly dispatch crews to the appropriate area, Powers said.
Eventually, when the Cold War Museum begins to take shape on a former Nike missile site on Hooes Road in Lorton, Powers said the bunker will be reconstructed the way they found it on Friday morning.
Row after row of filing cabinets filled the third room of the bunker, their drawers containing emergency broadcast tapes and films that would have been broadcast in the case of a nuclear attack or natural disaster.
A tall, indestructible-looking safe which used to contain trace amounts of radioactive material stood with its lock hanging down on the door. Powers believes that when government officials came back to officially close the bunker, they had forgotten the combination to the safe and had to bore through the lock to remove the material, which would have been used to calibrate Geiger meters to check for radioactive hotspots around Lorton if a nuclear missile hit Washington.

LAST WEEKEND, Powers and his volunteers were able to tag, catalogue and box up the first two rooms of the bunker, with the third room needing "just a little more work" and a fourth room still about a day from being finished, he said. "Overall, we're about 70 percent finished with everything here. We're just looking for a place to store everything now."
Fairfax County has provided Powers and the Cold War Museum with boxes to move all the items and will help transport the boxes from the bunker to the storage area, he said, a donation for which he is "incredibly grateful."
As acting collections manager and board member for the museum, Beth Eubanks said the history encased in the bunker is a collection of items that "would have affected regular citizens" during the Cold War.
A graduate of the George Washington University's Museum Studies Program, Eubanks said collecting all the items was "a true challenge. This is a time capsule that we want to preserve. It's history where it was and we want to keep everything in context."
Looking at the piles and piles of paperwork, Eubanks said they may not even know the full worth of the items they'd received until it is all inspected more carefully.
"There could be some really important things in here we just haven't found yet," she said.
Inger de Montecinos, Eubank's intern and current student with the Museum Studies program at George Washington said the stockpile of items was "more than I thought it would be."
Her father served in the Army during the 1960s, and digging through papers from that era gives her the chance to learn more about his time in the service, she said.
"I didn't realize I'd have the chance to do this," de Montecinos said.
Although she has worked with the collections department of the Smithsonian before and has some idea what goes into building museum exhibits, de Montecinos said it was a "pleasant surprise" to find so much of the bunker still seemingly intact.
"Here, I get to see the before part of a museum, the evolution and the anticipation and the plans for what it will be," she said. "It's all very exciting."





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