Take The CO "Bunker" Tour In Photos
Sep 30, 2007 | 10:25 am
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 2,069
Take The CO "Bunker" Tour In Photos
This tour was great.
If you missed it, here's a glimpse at what we saw:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/origina...7602209298362/
and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/origina...09298362/show/
(The one thing we forgot to photograph were the bagels at the end!)
Thanks, Continental!
If you missed it, here's a glimpse at what we saw:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/origina...7602209298362/
and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/origina...09298362/show/
(The one thing we forgot to photograph were the bagels at the end!)
Thanks, Continental!
Sep 30, 2007 | 12:08 pm
#2
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: CLT
Programs: Choice Hotels/FFOCUS
Posts: 7,259
I'm so jealous that I missed this DO. Thanks for the great pics.
Sep 30, 2007 | 12:22 pm
#3
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: LAS, SAT, IAH
Programs: Flying Nut
Posts: 6,368
Chris,
I think you missed wall outlet number 1,243 and the second light switch on the far right of the main room. I willsend you those pics!
Just Kidding, great job on the pics.
Scott
I think you missed wall outlet number 1,243 and the second light switch on the far right of the main room. I willsend you those pics!
Just Kidding, great job on the pics.
Scott
Sep 30, 2007 | 1:56 pm
#4
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Grand County, Colorado
Programs: IHG Plat, HH D, UA GS, Perm BonVoyed
Posts: 2,013
.....
Last edited by RoyalFlush; Apr 4, 2009 at 8:32 am
Sep 30, 2007 | 3:10 pm
#5
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: EWR
Programs: SPG LT Plat/P100, UA 1K 1MM
Posts: 532
Thanks for posting these, I was on the simulator tour (which was excellent) so I missed the bunker. Looks very cool.
Sep 30, 2007 | 4:09 pm
#6
Join Date: Aug 1999
Location: Alexandria, VA, USA NW Platinum Elite Since 1999, United GoldMM, Hyatt Discoverist, SPG Gold, Hilton Diamond, Hertz #1 Gold, IC Ambassador
Posts: 7,451
Sep 30, 2007 | 5:23 pm
#7
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Houston, TX
Programs: US Airways Dividend Miles Gold Preferred, Continental OnePass Elite Platinum, FFOCUS
Posts: 103
Wow! I see me in the pics! Exciting! I'm the guy in the In-N-Out Shirt! 
Sep 30, 2007 | 5:43 pm
#8
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Programs: Delta SkyTeam, Marriott Bonvoy
Posts: 72
This tour was great.
If you missed it, here's a glimpse at what we saw:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/origina...7602209298362/
and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/origina...09298362/show/
(The one thing we forgot to photograph were the bagels at the end!)
Thanks, Continental!
If you missed it, here's a glimpse at what we saw:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/origina...7602209298362/
and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/origina...09298362/show/
(The one thing we forgot to photograph were the bagels at the end!)
Thanks, Continental!
Sep 30, 2007 | 5:59 pm
#9
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Grazie Gold Lounge
Programs: UA-2MM; GalacticXpress-Irridium
Posts: 10,332
Here is OCR'd bunker history handout:
The 40,000-square-foot, two-story bunker here was the creation of Ling-Chieh Louis Kung, the nephew of Taiwans influential Madame Chiang Kai-shek. The fortune he earned during the booming 1970s from his now-defunct Houston oil company, Westland Oil Development Corp., allowed him to indulge his fears that Red China or the Soviet Union would launch a nuclear attack on the U.S.
Mr. Kung, who died in 1996 at about the age of 75, bought hundreds of acres of wooded cow pasture on the edge of this small town and secretly built an underground fortress to house at least 1000 people, including his employees and their families, for a two-month emergency.
Now, Continental Airlines, for reasons of its own, has taken over part of the extravagant Cold War folly, with plans to use it as a crisis-operations center.
The destruction and panic wrought along the Gulf Coast by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year prompted many companies to seek new places to house emergency operations. Continental had an emergency-operations center near Houstons George Bush Intercontinental Airport and it has offices downtown. But concerned about gridlock, floods and possible electrical outages in a hurricane, the company decided it needed a safer backup facility to operate its world-wide flights if it should ever have to evacuate its Houston headquarters. The airline, along with more than 20 other companies, found its solution buried deep inside a hill in this small community northwest of Houston.
In May, John Stelly, Continentals managing director of technology, was given 45 days to convert the rented shelter space for emergency offices and data storage. After descending more than 50 feet in an elevator to survey the project, he found himself in a subterranean ghost town of shadowy halls, mysterious rooms and dust-covered equipment.
The executive says he stared in wonder at a room filled with 115 triple-decker bunks, each with an individual reading light. Later, as he went to work there, he sometimes imagined what it would be like to be trapped in this place for months with hundreds of other people. It gives you a weird, eerie feeling, he said.
The world was awash in old fallout shelters after the Cold War ended in 1989. Over the years, many public and private bunkers in the U.S. and Europe have been converted to wine cellars, nightclubs, storage facilities and even mushroom farms. A bunker secretly built in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., to house Congress is now rented out to the public for parties and showcased in guided tours. Many other old shelters have been marketed as secure data centers or emergency headquarters for companies.
Adam Laurie, who renovates and leases ex-military bomb shelters in the United Kingdom, toured Mr. Kungs Texas bunker three years ago. Though he was impressed with the quality of construction, the degree of paranoia of the person who built it was extreme, he said.
A tunnel leading into the bunker.
The bunker was as self-contained as a small city, with its own power and medical facilities, morgue, jail cells, recreation rooms and water tanks. Two pagoda-style buildings outfitted with gun ports for machine guns protected stairwell entrances to tunnels leading into the shelter. In case of an attack, the tunnels were designed to collapse, sealing off the bunker from the outside world. Two hundred feet away, an above-ground, four-story office building with bulletproof windows housed Mr. Kungs oil-company headquarters and family residence.
From the start the project, completed in 1982, was a source of intrigue and gossip for the town of Montgomery. Residents watched as a mile-long procession of cement trucks ferried cargo to what they knew only as a giant hole in the ground. Rumors swirled for years of a secret subterranean shopping mall. Everybodys heard about it. Everybodys curious about it. Not everybodys seen it, said Jennifer Stratton, a waitress at Phils Roadhouse and Grill down the road from the bunker.
Mr. Kung lost title to the property after the 1980s oil bust. The bunker sat frozen in time until investors bought it and in 2003 hired Montgomery-based Westlin Corp. to take charge of converting it into a rental site for data storage.
A quick survey of the property made it clear this would be no ordinary renovation. Using a flashlight to light his way, Westlin President David Herr says he made his way past wasp nests an d thick cobwebs to the underground stairwell, then through two reinforced steel blast doors that slammed shut behind him.
A cutaway of the complex built by Ling-Chieh Louis Kung.
In the bunkers control room, the panel where flashing lights would signal a nuclear attack was still mounted on a wall with the key in the slot for locking down the facility. Geiger counters for measuring radioactivity remained on water and ventilation systems.
Mr. Herr quickly saw that some of the rooms would be easier to convert than others. Decontamination showers have been left along since they might still prove useful in a chemical spill or other emergency.
Westlin installed a small elevator so tenants wouldnt have to take the stairs, and secured it with biometric access that requires handprint to verify identities. The company is converting 13 small conjugal rooms, originally intended to give couples privacy, but Mr. Herr and his staff are still puzzling over what to do with some of the space. For example, four steel-encased jail cells remain untouched with their original bed frames and doors because they are too small to bother updating.
Interest was only lukewarm when the bunker opened for leasing in early 2005. That changed after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, with the number of bunker tenants doubling to 50, including Continental, the largest occupant. Other tenants include Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and medical companies from Houston and Louisiana.
Continental spent several million dollars - - it wont say exactly how much - - to customize its bunkhouse space and additional space leased in the nearby office building. Once the lease contract was signed, Mr. Stelly had to rush to complete the conversion of the companys 2,000-square-foot bunker space before this years hurricane season. Workers had to tear down one wall, a job that usually takes a couple of hours. In this case, it took two days labor with a sledgehammer to break up the two-foot-thick steel-reinforced concrete.
When power and air-conditioning units proved too big to get down the elevator, workers had to dig down through the earth to reach the corrugated-steel tunnels and peel back the top panels so the equipment could be lowered in by crane.
Continentals executives have decided they will activate the bunker in a Category 3 storm, or whenever workers must evacuate the downtown Houston control center. The airlines space leased in the above-ground office building is for 275 emergency staff. Only a few workers will be needed in the bunker.
Tomorrow, Continental plans to operate a work shift from the site and hold an open house and barbeque so employees can bring their families to see the bunker. If history is any indicator, not everyone will be interested in the tour. Mr. Stelly said some Continental employees who have already been to the facility have preferred to wait up top rather than descend into the depths of the bunker.
Mr. Kung, who died in 1996 at about the age of 75, bought hundreds of acres of wooded cow pasture on the edge of this small town and secretly built an underground fortress to house at least 1000 people, including his employees and their families, for a two-month emergency.
Now, Continental Airlines, for reasons of its own, has taken over part of the extravagant Cold War folly, with plans to use it as a crisis-operations center.
The destruction and panic wrought along the Gulf Coast by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year prompted many companies to seek new places to house emergency operations. Continental had an emergency-operations center near Houstons George Bush Intercontinental Airport and it has offices downtown. But concerned about gridlock, floods and possible electrical outages in a hurricane, the company decided it needed a safer backup facility to operate its world-wide flights if it should ever have to evacuate its Houston headquarters. The airline, along with more than 20 other companies, found its solution buried deep inside a hill in this small community northwest of Houston.
In May, John Stelly, Continentals managing director of technology, was given 45 days to convert the rented shelter space for emergency offices and data storage. After descending more than 50 feet in an elevator to survey the project, he found himself in a subterranean ghost town of shadowy halls, mysterious rooms and dust-covered equipment.
The executive says he stared in wonder at a room filled with 115 triple-decker bunks, each with an individual reading light. Later, as he went to work there, he sometimes imagined what it would be like to be trapped in this place for months with hundreds of other people. It gives you a weird, eerie feeling, he said.
The world was awash in old fallout shelters after the Cold War ended in 1989. Over the years, many public and private bunkers in the U.S. and Europe have been converted to wine cellars, nightclubs, storage facilities and even mushroom farms. A bunker secretly built in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., to house Congress is now rented out to the public for parties and showcased in guided tours. Many other old shelters have been marketed as secure data centers or emergency headquarters for companies.
Adam Laurie, who renovates and leases ex-military bomb shelters in the United Kingdom, toured Mr. Kungs Texas bunker three years ago. Though he was impressed with the quality of construction, the degree of paranoia of the person who built it was extreme, he said.
A tunnel leading into the bunker.
The bunker was as self-contained as a small city, with its own power and medical facilities, morgue, jail cells, recreation rooms and water tanks. Two pagoda-style buildings outfitted with gun ports for machine guns protected stairwell entrances to tunnels leading into the shelter. In case of an attack, the tunnels were designed to collapse, sealing off the bunker from the outside world. Two hundred feet away, an above-ground, four-story office building with bulletproof windows housed Mr. Kungs oil-company headquarters and family residence.
From the start the project, completed in 1982, was a source of intrigue and gossip for the town of Montgomery. Residents watched as a mile-long procession of cement trucks ferried cargo to what they knew only as a giant hole in the ground. Rumors swirled for years of a secret subterranean shopping mall. Everybodys heard about it. Everybodys curious about it. Not everybodys seen it, said Jennifer Stratton, a waitress at Phils Roadhouse and Grill down the road from the bunker.
Mr. Kung lost title to the property after the 1980s oil bust. The bunker sat frozen in time until investors bought it and in 2003 hired Montgomery-based Westlin Corp. to take charge of converting it into a rental site for data storage.
A quick survey of the property made it clear this would be no ordinary renovation. Using a flashlight to light his way, Westlin President David Herr says he made his way past wasp nests an d thick cobwebs to the underground stairwell, then through two reinforced steel blast doors that slammed shut behind him.
A cutaway of the complex built by Ling-Chieh Louis Kung.
In the bunkers control room, the panel where flashing lights would signal a nuclear attack was still mounted on a wall with the key in the slot for locking down the facility. Geiger counters for measuring radioactivity remained on water and ventilation systems.
Mr. Herr quickly saw that some of the rooms would be easier to convert than others. Decontamination showers have been left along since they might still prove useful in a chemical spill or other emergency.
Westlin installed a small elevator so tenants wouldnt have to take the stairs, and secured it with biometric access that requires handprint to verify identities. The company is converting 13 small conjugal rooms, originally intended to give couples privacy, but Mr. Herr and his staff are still puzzling over what to do with some of the space. For example, four steel-encased jail cells remain untouched with their original bed frames and doors because they are too small to bother updating.
Interest was only lukewarm when the bunker opened for leasing in early 2005. That changed after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, with the number of bunker tenants doubling to 50, including Continental, the largest occupant. Other tenants include Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and medical companies from Houston and Louisiana.
Continental spent several million dollars - - it wont say exactly how much - - to customize its bunkhouse space and additional space leased in the nearby office building. Once the lease contract was signed, Mr. Stelly had to rush to complete the conversion of the companys 2,000-square-foot bunker space before this years hurricane season. Workers had to tear down one wall, a job that usually takes a couple of hours. In this case, it took two days labor with a sledgehammer to break up the two-foot-thick steel-reinforced concrete.
When power and air-conditioning units proved too big to get down the elevator, workers had to dig down through the earth to reach the corrugated-steel tunnels and peel back the top panels so the equipment could be lowered in by crane.
Continentals executives have decided they will activate the bunker in a Category 3 storm, or whenever workers must evacuate the downtown Houston control center. The airlines space leased in the above-ground office building is for 275 emergency staff. Only a few workers will be needed in the bunker.
Tomorrow, Continental plans to operate a work shift from the site and hold an open house and barbeque so employees can bring their families to see the bunker. If history is any indicator, not everyone will be interested in the tour. Mr. Stelly said some Continental employees who have already been to the facility have preferred to wait up top rather than descend into the depths of the bunker.
Sep 30, 2007 | 6:04 pm
#10
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Grazie Gold Lounge
Programs: UA-2MM; GalacticXpress-Irridium
Posts: 10,332
The Bunker was built in the 80's for $25 million.
At the top of the pagoda buildings are machine gun ports. I've requested CO Insider to install machine guns next time to make it realistic. Now wouldn't that be a great simulator
.
At the top of the pagoda buildings are machine gun ports. I've requested CO Insider to install machine guns next time to make it realistic. Now wouldn't that be a great simulator
.
Sep 30, 2007 | 6:23 pm
#11
Suspended
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: new york, ny, usa
Posts: 13,536
very cool tour. it was about 50 minutes out to the site. i got a good nap on the way back.
thanks, again, CO. very interesting tour.
thanks, again, CO. very interesting tour.
Sep 30, 2007 | 7:07 pm
#12
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Clinging to the edifices of a decadent past from the biggest city in America nobody really cares about.
Programs: (ಠ_ಠ)
Posts: 9,077
Customer:
....But....but......I thought my Sam's membership, albeit expired, would let me in....that's what they told me on the phone!
Agent:
Buuh-by
Machine Gun:
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat
Sep 30, 2007 | 7:37 pm
#13
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Grazie Gold Lounge
Programs: UA-2MM; GalacticXpress-Irridium
Posts: 10,332
Sep 30, 2007 | 8:36 pm
#14
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 7,541
Is the agent from those CO commercials where they go buh bye
Oct 1, 2007 | 9:20 am
#15
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: PVD
Programs: Priority Club Plat
Posts: 12,312
Unbelievable connection!!!
I just found out something. My cousin-in-law was the actual architect of the office building there! I am sure he doesn't even know the building has been restored.
I need to talk to him soon and may be bring him back to see his "baby"!
And here are my photos of the tour:
http://rkkwan.zenfolio.com/p721103984/
I need to talk to him soon and may be bring him back to see his "baby"!
And here are my photos of the tour:
http://rkkwan.zenfolio.com/p721103984/