Nothing in this glass-enclosed cubicle at street level in the residential neighborhood of Merihaka, in the coastal area of Helsinki, leads one to imagine the enormous protective cavities that it hides 20 meters underground. The Russian invasion of Ukraine just over a year ago shook Western certainties about international security and prompted Finland to ask for NATO membership, a membership that will materialize in the coming days. But the Nordic country, which is holding legislative elections today, has pampered national defense for decades for obvious reasons.
It shares a 1,340 kilometer land border with the former Soviet Union and now with Russia. And its formidable network of underground shelters to protect the civilian population in the event of war or catastrophe –like the one that La Vanguardia has visited in Merihaka– is a key element of a comprehensive defensive system that goes beyond the army and involves the whole of the society.
According to February figures from the Ministry of the Interior, Finland has underground shelters for 4.8 million people – the country has 5.5 million inhabitants – which it has been building since the Cold War, although some already existed at the beginning of the century. XX and were used in the years of World War II.
In peacetime, these underground bunkers are used for other purposes, such as storage, parking, a sports field or a children's playground, on the condition that it is feasible to empty them and activate them as a refuge within 72 hours, the period established by authorities and experts in civil protection. In Helsinki, the current network of 5,500 bunkers exceeds the capacity of the census of the capital (650,000 inhabitants), as it can accommodate 900,000 people, that is, also non-residents who work in the city and hotel guests.
A flight of metal stairs that begins in a housing complex descends into the bowels of the granite subsoil where the Merihaka shelter is excavated, measuring 14,750 square meters, suitable for 6,000 people. But that entrance is reserved for a real emergency, so we descend through the street cubicle, through which users of the underground sports and leisure facilities enter daily.
Once below, the amplitude of the tunnels is surprising, whose rough whitewashed walls denote that we are surrounded by the 1,800-million-year-old living rock of the Helsinki subsoil. The protection zone is entered through two thick double-leaf blue doors, separated by an intermediate space. “This first door can withstand an explosion of up to seven bars of pressure; the second door is to stop toxic elements, gases, chemical substances and radiation”, explains Tomi Rask, a specialist from the Helsinki Department of Civil Defense.
The one in Merihaka is a shelter built in 2003 by the City Council, like other similar ones in the city, but the vast majority of bunkers in the capital and in Finland are private, as the law requires any building or group of buildings over 1,200 square meters (1,500 if it is an industrial premises) to have their own shelter. NGOs and third sector associations receive instruction from the Civil Defense authorities to cooperate as volunteers in the daily management of a possible emergency stay underground, in periods of between a few hours and a few days, even weeks. In rural areas there are no bunkers of this type, considering that a military attack in those places is highly unlikely.
“The Finnish approach to national defense is comprehensive; It is based on compulsory military service for men and voluntary service for women, combined with courses by the armed forces for civilians, to which women usually enroll and in which, for example, they learn to shoot a rifle, together with a key element passive defense such as underground shelters”, explains Minna Ålander, a security analyst at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA) in Helsinki, in an interview prior to the visit to the shelter. There are also high-level courses from the Ministry of Defense for politicians, company executives, and infrastructure or supply managers, on national defense and emergencies, from a military attack to natural catastrophes.
"We are a large country in area but with a small population, and it is the constitutional obligation of every citizen to contribute to national defense," continues Ålander. The Finnish armed forces have the largest artillery arsenal in Europe and instruct 23,000 recruits a year, which together with the permanent staff and the 900,000 reservists aged up to 60 -who in turn periodically participate in maneuvers and military training- would make it possible to mobilize a million combatants in case of war. This is noticeable in society: in almost every Finnish family there is one or more soldiers or reservists.
The memory of the Winter War of 1939-1940, when the Soviet Union attacked Finland and Finnish soldiers, outnumbered and outgunned, put up a stubborn resistance that humiliated and angered Stalin, is still present, and is relevant to Finnish identity. and for his idea of global national defense against the invader. In the bridges of this country there are gaps where military engineers can insert explosives to blow them up and thus slow down the advance of the enemy.
“The network of underground shelters is for 4.8 million people and we are 5.5 million Finns; that almost million people difference is the one who would be outside fighting to defend the country”, Tomi Rask clarifies in our underground tour.
The shelters are also designed for non-war threats such as a nuclear accident, but since the Russian aggression against Ukraine they are seen in that light by the population. “We have had many questions from citizens, who wanted to make sure that the shelter system works and that we are doing our job well; Now they ask less questions”, Nina Järvenkylä, in charge of Communication, intervenes.
We reached the four cavernous warehouses where the civilians would be housed, now housing sports fields, a children's play area, a cafeteria, and a garage. On one of the courts, employees of a company are playing a game of floorball, known in Finnish as salibandy, a very popular indoor sport in the Nordic countries. “It differs from track hockey in that the stick and the ball are very light, and it is a game without tackling the opponent,” explains Aleksanteri, who, like his teammates, sees nothing special about playing sports 20 meters underground. . In other shelters there is everything from a go-kart circuit to ice skating or swimming pools.
In the Merihaka one we observed, carefully disassembled and stored, bunk beds for 2,000 people, which would be used in eight-hour shifts. In an adjacent gallery, yellow squares painted on the floor mark the location of the 400 portable latrines, and metal sinks line one wall. In the event of an attack, the population would be alerted by sirens (there are 40 in Helsinki, which are sounded as a test every first Monday of the month), television, radio, web pages, mobile phones and all electronic media. People should then go to their proper shelter, bringing their own cold food, medicines, and a sleeping bag or blanket.
“We have been organized for decades and in the shelters there are civil defense rehearsals every year,” says Tomi Rask. We have the neighbor we have; before the USSR and now Russia, but it is the same neighbor. We must be prepared."
