In Connecticut the following stations at one point or another had bomb shelters (red indicates separate page on this site via top menu):
WELI, New Haven
WICH, Norwich
WILI, Willimantic
WNHU, New Haven
WNLC, New London
WQQW, Waterbury
WTIC, Hartford
In most cases it appears that these shelters were constructed at federal government expense. These stations, and others such as WBIS in Bristol, were also offered emergency power generators and fuel tanks and some, such at WTIC in Hartford, even had some nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) protection installed at government expense in the sixties and/or seventies. We have toured a number of these radio station shelters and what surprised us most is the complete lack of any kind of fallout protection in the form of an air filtration system. In fact most of the broadcast station shelters we've seen lacked any kind of ventilation at all giving us the impression that they were only designed for blast protection or perhaps only to provide shelter from a storm. The lact of the heavy duty blast doors commonly found on nuclear hardened shelters is also suspicious. Since some of these shelters are reportedly WWII-ear the lack of fallout protection would make sense but in the more contemporary shelters such an omission raises lots of questions.
Other CT stations may indeed have had shelters. Please contact us if you have any information on other shelters or have recollections and/or photos of any of the shelters above.
WNHU - New Haven: There are several reports that WNHU at New Haven University had a bomb shelter at one point and that more recently the shelter had been converted into a small production studio. We are looking for information and/or photos.
WNLC, New London, CT: See dedicated page with lots of photos.
WELI - Hamden, CT: WELI's shelter was located beneath the old transmitter building. See dedicated page with photos.
WICH - Norwich, CT: See dedicated page with photos.
WILI - Willimantic, CT: See dedicated page with photos.
WQQW - Waterbury, CT: This station had a dedicated underground shelter which was separate from the main building. By the seventies the shelter had been converted into sales offices. We are looking for pictures as the site was demolished in the 90's.
WTIC - Hartford, CT: WTIC maintains a sophisticated shelter at their transmitter site in Avon.
