National Fallout Shelter Program Public Shelters Virtual Tours
First Baptist Church of White Settlement, Texas
The First Baptist Church of White Settlement is located
on White Settlement Road in White Settlement Texas on the west side of
Fort Worth. The town borders along the west side of what used to be Carswell
Air Force Base. Carswell AFB was closed as a Strategic Air Command base
in 1991 and is now called the Joint Reserve Base. I stopped by the church
in the summer of 2000 to ask about the fallout shelter and the church maintenance man was nice enough
to show me around the basement area when I dropped by to ask about the
fallout shelter.
As a side note; if you ever see the movie Strategic Air Command,
watch closely the first B-36 takeoff sequence. When the B-36 leaves the
Carswell Air Force Base runway and the landing gear starts to go up, you
can clearly see this church in the distance as the B-36's left landing
gear passes in front of it.
This is the entrance door nearest to the inside basement stairway. The shelter sign is above this door, as you can see. There is no capacity listed on the sign, but the Fort Worth/Tarrant County Community Fallout Shelter Plan I have has the capacity of this shelter listed at 760 persons. The church is a fairly old structure that was built in the 40's. Last time I went by the church in July 2008 this shelter sign was gone from above this doorway.
Here is the largest room in the basement of the church. Pretty much your average church assembly hall. The basement is very large in this building. The basement has a kitchen, classrooms, restrooms and offices in addition to the assembly hall. I didn't see any shelter signs inside marking the shelter area.
During my conversation with the church maintenance man, who was a great help, he said that there were still some of the original shelter supplies around. He told me that he moved these Sanitation Kits out of a closet under the stairs (standard shelter supply storage area by the way) some time ago. This is one of the first shelters I checked out after starting this web site. It had been a long time since I had checked out any fallout shelters so I was wondering if I would still be able to find a shelter with some supplies still in place. These 3 sanitation kits were stored in a shed outside the church and were still in decent shape.
The maintenance man showed me this curious item when I asked him if there where any medical kits ever stocked in the shelter. He said this trunk used to be full of medical supplies and that they emptied it out and were using it as a tool chest now. The trunk is far to large to be a common first aid kit. Maybe when the church was designated as a fallout shelter that some members took the time to put a large medical kit together? I don't know. This trunk is not Office Of Civil Defense issue but it is about the same size as one of the OCD issue Medical Kit Cs.