JANIE GOULD

During the Cold War, communities all over the country had disaster plans.  Florida had several likely targets for Soviet missile attacks, including Cape Canaveral, Patrick Air Force Base and Miami.   Nobody expected Stuart, Fort Pierce or Vero Beach to take a direct hit from a nuclear bomb, but the region could have attracted panicky refugees from other parts of Florida.  In Indian River County, officials decided that a remote research facility on Oslo Road would be the place where refugees would be washed down and screened for radiation. Roy Howard, Jr.  was assistant to the county engineer at the time.

“Really, we knew that a good number of people would die, and we would have to take care of burying them, so the county road and bridge department would have bulldozers, maybe even a dragline, and that would be placed at the entomological research laboratory,” Howard said.

Q. “And this would be for mass burials?”

A. “Yes.”

Q. “Was this plan actually put to pen and paper?”

A. “Absolutely. I’m the one who did it. It’s a pretty thick notebook.”

Q. “Let’s say Miami had been bombed and thousands of people from Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach were heading this way. What would the highway situation have been like?”

A. “U.S. 1 would have been jam-packed, but a lot of people injured by fallout probably wouldn’t have survived if they were coming from as far south as Fort Lauderdale.”

Indian River County’s plan involved law enforcement and the military because of the great potential for civil unrest.

“We know that once we had that many people coming, there would be problems,” Howard said.

He remembers seminars about fallout shelters at Vero Beach High School.

Q. “Did the county build any fallout shelters for officials?”

A. “No, but we knew where there were some places that were useable.”

Q. “Did you have them supplied with water and food?”

A. “No, but we had plans for that if we thought something was going to happen.”

Q. “Did you have a fallout shelter in your yard?”

A. “No, but I sure gave it a thought! I had a more positive feeling about things, though. I felt like it really wasn’t going to happen.”

Q. “Do you remember any hysteria in the community?”

A.  “No. There were a few people who got really upset, but everyone else tried to calm them down and said we were going to be OK.”

As a high school student in Vero Beach in the 1950s, Roy Howard witnessed several of the early and often unsuccessful rocket launches from Cape Canaveral.

“We saw them blow up, so we knew things were possible, but I don’t think anybody ever got overly excited,” he said.

if radiation had blown toward Indian River County and residents needed to evacuate, they would have had only one way out – State Road 60. The road had just two lanes, deep canals on both sides, and numerous wooden bridges. Howard wrote a plan that called for residents to evacuate to the west.

Q. “Was there a designated evacuation point out there?”

A. “No. The instructions were to listen to your radio or TV, and take food and clothing with you. We had a list of stuff they should take with them to survive, and they would have to survive about seven or eight days out there.”

Q, “Sounds like hurricane planning.”

1. “That evacuation plan would be pretty obsolete with the kind of bombs we have today.”

Q: “ In other words, forget evacuating if it happened today!”

A. “Yes. Hopefully, you still have your fallout shelter.”

Roy Howard Jr. is retired as principal of Rosewood Elementary School. This interview was heard first as part of Janie Gould’s Floridays series on WQCS/88.9 FM, NPR for the Treasure Coast. To hear other Floridays shows, go to wqcs.org and click on News.