| Description | Minute volume indexed. The minutes are printed and signed by the committee Chairman. The minutes are in the volume entitled 'Emergency Committee', and also a brown A4 folder, which also contains some Officer Reports, dated September 1940 to December 1941. The minutes include the reports of the committee to Council and the General Purposes Committee, reports of the Lord Mayor and Town Clerk on the defence of the city, Treasurer's Memoranda on the financial organisation of the Air Raid Precautions (ARP, later Civil Defence) and Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) Departments, reports on the reorganisation of the A.F.S. in 1939, correspondence with, and circulars issued by the Home Office, accounts, and staffing information, including the organisation of unpaid voluntary personnel and allowances given. There are detailed discussions included in the minutes for the first meeting of the committee on 1 September 1939 documenting the early reviews of civil defence precautions, including opening hours of licensed premises, blackouts, evacuation of hospitals, early warning systems, the preparedness of civil defence personnel, and equipment storage and maintenance facilities, such as supplementary water supplies and pumps for the AFS. There are also observations upon the success of air raid warning sirens and public responses, the issuing of instructions and propaganda to ensure the public responded to these correctly, the defence of municipal buildings and infrastructure (including Corporation staff), and the requisitioning and conversion of unoccupied properties to house those rendered homeless as a result of aerial bombing. There are also reports on bomb hits (bomb damage and casualties) on individual properties in the city, detailed reports of persistent, larger scale air attacks, as occurred in the area around Tyburn Road during 1940, and reports and procedures on the after care of air raid victims. The majority of the minutes cover the early war years, 1939 - 1941, when air raids were at their most intense, and there is a notable slackening off of committee business after March 1942. |