If You Can't Afford the Greenbrier Resort, Try the Plain Pipe-Rack Underground Shelter

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 14, 1998 | by Paul M. Rodriguez, | Jamie Dettmer, | Eli Lehrer

It's only a short drive from the back of West Virginia's palatial Greenbrier resort to an ordinary-looking door marked "Danger High Voltage." Until 1992, when the Washington Post Magazine revealed that the door hid a nuclear-fallout shelter for members of Congress, not even most of the resort's 1,000-plus employees knew it existed. Once its location became known, the shelter had very little use.

Run under the code name of Project Greek Island, the shelter includes spartan rooms for lawmakers and their staffs along with two large auditoriums intended for the House and Senate. When operational, the shelter retained a 60-day supply of food, water and other necessities.

Since 1996, the resort has run the bunker as a special attraction, opening it to registered guests for tours at $20 a pop -- it even can be rented for special events. During its active life as a congressional shelter, the resort's seven "Television Repairmen" -- independent contractors -- worked to maintain it, coming and going through a push-away wall in the back of a workshop.

Although the bunker's decommissioning received extensive media coverage, a few issues suggest that Congress may have decided the idea of having a bunker or shelter was still a good one. First, after its existence became known, the government spent almost two years stripping everything of value from the bunker. It wasn't only high-tech communications gear that disappeared: Bunk beds, chairs and tables also were removed. Indeed, as guides freely admit, the furniture that guests see was purchased by the resort to fix the place up as a tourist attraction.

And Tom Hoppin, a senior vice president of CSX -- the Greenbrier's parent company -- let news alert! in on another little secret: Six of the seven "repairmen" responsible for the shelter disappeared after it was decommissioned and they can only be contacted via the Department of Defense. Wonder what that means?