New Orleans hospitals—like tenpins in a bowling alley—are too closely grouped and for that reason make an excellent atom bomb target.
Construction of the new veterans' hospital directly behind Charity adds to the problem.
The situation resembles conditions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
These opinions were expressed at a luncheon of defense experts yesterday by Dr. Ralph W. Brauer, head of the city's civil defense radiological division.
Speakers included Brig. Gen. Hufft, Mayor Morrison, Paul Ris-troph, city director of civil defense, and William G. Zetzmann, district director.
Dr. Brauer, a professor in the LSU medical school, said the city's medical facilities "are concentrated about 80 per cent in the area around Charity Hospital." URGES SCATTERING
As far as defense is concerned, he said, this is "typical of what should not be in the way of medical facilities." Future medical buildings should be scattered over a wide area to assure that a greater proportion should survive an attack.
Gen. Hufft, adjutant general of Louisiana, said New Orleans, Bat on Rouge aid Lake Charles are the most vital defense areas in the state.
The first two are more likely targets than Lake Charles, he said, but the latter is important in the "mutual defense" plan because it can go to the rescue of highly industrial Orange, Tex., if that city should be struck.
Ristroph said New Orleans is relatively safe from atomic attack because, "in order to get to the southern portion of the country the enemy would have to pass over a large area of the nation, including some better targets." SURPRISE ATTACK
Mayor Morrison said that the nation's civil defense leaders told him in recent conferences in Washington that the U. S. probably would be hit by surprise if there should be another war.
"We will have to be able to show how fast we can get up off the floor," he said.
District directors at the luncheon included George E. Schneider, John A. Oulliber, Edward Haspel and J. Glenn Wilson.
Zetzmann introduced Rep. He-bert, District Attorney Perez, Sheriff Vial of St Charles Parish, and others.
