Protecting the fire service during wartime - late cold war in Sweden

[Micael]

Civil defense resources and ambition levels varied depending on the municipality, but Stockholm in particular had both an substantial threat looming over its head in cas war broke out, and so it was considered particularly necessary to harden fire and rescue resources there.

Most cities/municipalities had a hardened command post for the civil defense, in various sizes and levels of hardenings. Starting in the late 1970’s Stockholm was structured around two such command centers (”Main centrals”) with a very substantial degree of hardening. These were located pretty far outside of the city limits, one responsible for the northern and one for the southern half of the city. Subordinated to these were eleven ”Forward Units” located within the city borders, and which had both a hardened command center (on a smaller scale) amd an attached fire and rescue task force. These units all had quarters for the firefighters, but several of them also had something that I think is a bit unusual internationally. That was a hardened facility to house the fire and rescue vehicles as well. They were all essentially laid out the same way and here I’ll detail FE Liljan (Lily) which was located in the Bromma area of Stockholm.

Here’s a schematic provided by eminent architect and prolific wikipedia contributor Holger Ellgaard, who is unfortunately no longer with us:


As you can see from this the facility was structured around an entrance ramp/tunnel which took the fire vehicles below ground and into a star shaped parking area. This had a manually operated turntable in the center, similar to the ones common on the railroads in the past. The vehicles would thus enter, be turned around on the turntable, and be able to reverse into one of the side tunnels, ready to be deployed. A side tunnel housed the command center, basic dining facilities and the like, and bunks for 90 people.

Photos of the facility:











This enabled fairly substantial civil defense/fire and rescue capabilities to remain spread out through the city but at the same time be largely immune from being taken out themselves in a bomb raid. The facility was designed to take direct hits from 250 kg bombs, could withstand nuclear blast shockwaves of 3 atmospheres, and had NBC filtration systems, along with decon facilities.

Unfortunately all of these were decommissioned in the 1990’s, and most were sold to private parties, the former FE Pionen is for instance currently a secure server hall for ISP Bahnhof. There would however have been an additional complication if one wanted to use them now, if they had still been available. That’s because fire apparatus has grown in size substantially since the 70’s and as I understand it the modern full sized ones are to tall to fit into these structures.

Nevertheless with civil defense capabilities now being gradually restored, not in the least in terms of fire and rescue capabilities, it may be that we’ll wind up with having to set up replacements for these hardened structures as well. For now they’ll remain a pretty interesting quirk from the cold war that was.

From other Forward Units, to illustrate similarities and differences.

Schematic of FE Maskrosen in the Östermalm are:


FE Pionen in the Södermalm area before being turned into a Bahnhof server hall, this shows the turntable mentioned above:


Schematic of FE Nässlan in the Midsommarkransen area superimposed on a map:

[Bernard Woolley]

Wow, Stockholm was pretty serious about protecting its fire service! Though, I have a feeling that in the event of the Third World War breaking out, they would not have had too much to save! The size issue of more modern fire appliances was one of the first things that came to mind when I saw the plans and pics.

The UK did plan to disperse 50% of its fire brigades from cities and towns to preserve them during the Transition To War. It wasn't, from all I've read, to keep them for fire fighting, or rescue. Post-strike, fire engines would be used to transport water and for decontamination. However, there was some planning in the '80s to deal with 'conventional' attacks. Exactly where appliances and firefighters would be dispersed to, I've never found out, but we had nothing like this.

[Micael]

Wow, Stockholm was pretty serious about protecting its fire service! Though, I have a feeling that in the event of the Third World War breaking out, they would not have had too much to save! The size issue of more modern fire appliances was one of the first things that came to mind when I saw the plans and pics.

The UK did plan to disperse 50% of its fire brigades from cities and towns to preserve them during the Transition To War. It wasn't, from all I've read, to keep them for fire fighting, or rescue. Post-strike, fire engines would be used to transport water and for decontamination. However, there was some planning in the '80s to deal with 'conventional' attacks. Exactly where appliances and firefighters would be dispersed to, I've never found out, but we had nothing like this.

Yeah in the full blown WWIII scenario probably not much they could do. But there were scenarios where it was expected that it could be more of a war of conquest and not a full blown nuclear exchange. In such a scenario there were probably things that could be done by the fire service. But that being said the main plan was to evacuate all the national leadership, government agencies and such to ”the Zone” away from Stockholm. It had, and to a degree still has, a very large number of hardened facilities for the elements of most importance and (mostly had) a large number of pre-prepared non-hardened facilities for the rest. So the expectation was that Stockholm would be hit hard and if we wanted to preserve national command and control it would need to be elsewhere.