NO Adventure

I spent many a hurricane inside during the 1970’s as a ham radio volunteer & knew well most of the people who worked there full time. It was built as a prototype for the nation. It contained decontamination showers, radio room, private offices, situation room, engine room with its own generators, had its own water & air purify supply. The 2nd floor contained men’s & women’s bunks, operating room, kitchen & cafeteria. If it had been city comm post during Katrina, we would have been able to summon help immediately. No flooding inside when sealed unless the water had gotten to top of diesel intakes, which it didn’t. The flooding you see was from busted pipes & years of neglect. It’s sad to see it in such bad shape. It served NOLA well through many a storm.

All my life I wanted to go in that shelter….glad you two did it and not me.

what a wonderful tour. i grew uo in lakeview and have always wondered what was beneath that “mountain” of green grass. my younger brother has claim of breaking in as a high school student at jesuit but did not say much about it. i went walking a couple of weeks ago and saw someone standing guard so i did not enter. thanks for the info andif there is anything that we can do to make it “something” again, keep me posted.
liesa rouse smith

It had been mentioned as a possible site for a museum/park area a few months back at one of the Lakeview Civic Improvement Association meetings. I’m trying to dig up some info on that to see if the idea is still being kicked around.

I’m so glad my cousin who grew up in New Orleans sent me your site. I grew up about 100 mile from New Orleans & lived in a big antebellum home in Ms. Our next door neighbor had a boom shelter, & altho it never had to be used for anything major, Thank God, it was a great place for us kids, back then, to go play & have our secret club meetings in. Yours is really cool, tho.

Excelent… I would love to go down there again..
Spent many an evening down there with the MTA radio club in the early 80s…

Thanks for the video.

While working at a Major New Orleans hospital in New Orleans in the 1980s I used to go to the Shelter every month for a meeting of MANA (Mutual Aid of New Orleans). We would eat a lunch, have meetings planning for natural or man made disasters, and discuss co-operation between corporate, government and military resources. We did not discuss anything near Katrina sized incidents. I also remember it being built when I was a child living in Metarie. I always wanted to go in it. It was a bit run down in the early to mid 80s, but it was impressive still.

The videos were suspenseful and awesome. You guys are way braver than I would be. As soon as I read the “dead body” graffitti I would have been outta there. I wanted to throw oxygen masks into the video for you, that fungus looked scary!

When I was a kid we used to ride our bikes down the “mountain” of dirt around the shelter. What a ride! We also hung on the wires and the “little ants” would come scurrying out of the shelter yelling at us because we were screwing up the power and water in the shelter. Eventually they put up a fence to keep us off the shelter. SO COOL (after 40+ years) to see what the inside looked like.

I remember Lou Reese, and CD people who went before him: Charlie Erdmann (Col-USA ret-who’s buried in Arlington Nat’l) the previous Director, Bobbie his secretary, John Cowart, Moe Jauchler-Communications, Daigle, Freddie & the others. The volunteers, including ham operators, manned the radios w/ Dwight ‘Smitty’ Smith. That was a great bunch of people who I’m glad I had the honor of working with. They always tried to do the right thing, and cared about ‘their’ city.

There were 2 stories, both underground. The ‘bottom’ story at the bottom of the stairs held the decomtamination shower, radio room, commercial radio station as you entered. There was a round central meeting room with circular hallway on the outside. The rooms on the outside of the hallway included the Director’s office, and Engine Room with diesels, generators, & other machinery. Through an interior stairway you accessed another round room on the 2nd desk that served as an eating facility/ meeting room. Around the outside of this room was the operating room/infirmary, ladies bunkroom, men’s bunkroom, and kitchen with serving line & stoves. Pictures above show the size of the main rooms.

There is a bomb shelter at the corner of Leon C. Simon and Franklin Ave. in an abandoned house. I was wondering if you two would go down inside it and video whats in there, it would be pretty interesting to see if they had any Cold War relecis down in there.

This reminds me from Fallout 3 (Game)

It’s like you’re entering Vault.

I think it was very expensive to built that shelter, and then it was just abandoned,
why it was abandoned?

I always wondered why they built it on ground level, didn’t they realize it would flood? My Dad managed a lot of downtown buildings during that period and was required to maintain water supplies and such, the stuff was provided by the Feds and they checked up on it regularly during the cold war.
I remember eavesdropping on a conversation where my mother was chewing my Dad out about complaining about all the crap he had to do regarding the stuff in the basements of the buildings.

I will always remember the terrifying answer he gave her, only the movie”On the Beach” scared me as much. He said, “for Christ sake MaryLou …the lucky ones will die if we are attacked….no one in their right mind would want to live after a nuclear attack, that’s why I carry my 45…

Be happy to send detailed drawings of the EOC to those interested. I write fiction and featured it in a couple of stories. PAVE BOLO:Target Iran and 411: Cybergeddan both feature an “alternate history” version. These stories are carried by Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Apple, etc I believe you’ll enjoy them. I also did a piece on Ponchartrain Beach for your enjoyment .
Drop me a note about the drawings at swausten@hotmail.com
Thanks!
Stephen Austen

Wow, this is first class exploring. It’s not just cool urban ruin-type entertainment, but great history and we are lucky to have apparently a good photo record. I love the then and now photos which are so closely resembled. I hope this place can be preserved for some use …

Does anyone know who owns the shelter????

Interesting to see that there is still interest with the building, and to see familiar names like Lou Reese, Mary Vernoy and others on this site. I was asked to return to New Orleans from Richmond VA last December to address the New Orleans Tour Guides Association about the EOC building and what it had contained, and it was distressing to come across the pictures of it’s present state . I had been one of the engineers responsible for renovating it in the early 1980s after it fell into disrepair in the late 70s. The building was ultimately shut down when the casing of the 1400′ deep water well cracked during the driving of pilings for the Regions Bank on the opposite corner. That rendered the air conditioning and generator cooling systems inoperative, which basically forced its closure. At the time, the cost would have been $77,000 to drill a new well, which would have been easily worth the money. We had attempted to get the well fixed, but the then CAO of the city wanted the property abandoned. Had the well been repaired, the building would never have had to close, and the place could have continued to be a great emergency operations center for the city. The designers had thought of everything in planning it. My crew and I spent many hours in that facility, reworking the mechanical plant and also volunteering as ham radio operators under Communications director Moe Jauchler and CD director Captain Estopinol. It is sad to see what has become of New Orleans and too many of it’s landmarks, and I am glad I don’t have to drive down those streets every day and think of what once was.

I am glad to see so much continuing interest in the old NOCD “bunker”. At present, I am working with representatives of preservation organizations, planning agencies, restoration architects, museum advocates, and a host of other interested parties in an attempt to restore the building and use it as a museum, training facility, and resource center. As we make progress on this project, I will try to keep everyone up-to-date on our progress.

Pretty impressive! I always wanted to see then inside like very single person that ever lived or grew up in Lakeview!! I would be willing to refurbish it with the help of others… Maybe make it into a museum??

From 1925 I was raised at 8400/6932 Pontchartrain Blvd. Living across the street from the shelter when they were building the shelter, my father brought coffee to the workers daily. He died 5/10/61 before the dedication of it. On the way to St Louis King of France Church in Bucktown, his funeral procession went down West End Blvd. As his hearse passed the shelter, all of the workers lined up along the road with hats doffed, saluting him. That pleasant memory will remain with me forever.
I lived in Lakeview until Katrina took our 338-12th St home.

Where is this paradis? Need directions!

That’s great to hear Lou Reese, I’m a young man (22) and all this kind of stuff is very very interesting to me! I love history especially the history of my city, even though I’m from 25 minutes west of New Orleans. If theirs some kind of way I can help out feel free to let me know, if it’s volunteering or signing a petition or something like that. mraiford281@live.com

I go to the lakefront a lot and thought it was always a hill till my girlfriend told me what it was today as we passed. I said are you serious? she said yeah so I turned around and saw the door was open. I parked my jeep by the street and we went inside and down the stairs until we got to the bottom an saw it was still flooded.

John DeMajo I see your name around a lot while researching stuff like this and really noticed it when I was looking up information on pontchartrain beach. I grew up outside the city in Norco, born in 1992. So I had no idea it was there until someone mentioned in passing a year or so ago. John if you could I would like it if you could email me some picture if you have any of pontchartrain beach, the bomb shelter and any other interesting lost history places in New Orleans! also if you could just tell me about any of them you might now, like I know their is an abandoned underground highway by canal an Harrahs casino that was suppose to connect out towards the east. Now it’s used as undergoing harrahs parking im told. mraiford281@live.com thanks John really appreciate it, love learnings about history

Sealed up but still creepy.

Now that would make a great place to live. Lots of cleaning up and construction but neat. Is that place still there?

I understand it was abandoned after well casing cracked making it unusable.

I wove it into some stories I’ve published on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. see: 411:Cybergeddan”

So cool I hope y’all bathed in bleach because yucky!

That is so cool. I grew up all around Lakeview as a child. I was born into the house at 241 36th St. Moved to a house on Walker, a couple blocks from Argonne, and the town house on the left of 35th St, a house off of Fleur De Lis. Also, we lived on Chapelle when Katrina hit. Lived in FL for a couple years, then moved back to NOLA in 2007. Moved in with a friend and lived on Filmore near Milne and then in two different houses on 39th St. for a little while. Finally, I stayed in the multicolored-orangish brick house at 5925 West End, the one with the Terra-cotta roof, right when you get off the interstate.
Anyway, I briefly explored the bomb shelter once before Katrina and it was very similar to this except the water was probably a couple feet lower, than it was in this video. You could comfortably walk on the floor that you were walking on in this video, without the use of waders. You just knew you probably weren’t wearing those shoes ever again when you got out. We went in at around 1am so everything was pitch black and only had one flashlight for the two of us. We were 13-14 years old at the time so this scared the living sh!t out of us. We maybe spent a total of 10 mins inside and it’s crazy to see how much it has changed inside of that place in a matter of 5 or 6 years after I went in back in 2004 right before Katrina hit. Cool video though. I wish we thought of going back and filming it but there was an extremely eerie feeling inside of that place back then and it was pretty scary.

Cool to figure out where the cover for a $B song came from and learn all this! Would like to see if i could explore when i visit nola!