Battling Terrorism

Terror on the Tracks
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
By Carl Prine

Let's say the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter really was a terrorist.

What if those were bombs he was placing on the chemical placard of a rail car inside the Thatcher Chemical Co. plant in suburban Las Vegas, and not his business cards?

Instead of a camera recording lax security over some of the deadliest chemicals ever produced, he held a detonator? And the string of chlorine gas cars trundling down Union Pacific Railroad tracks in the heart of Vegas was his prey?

If he was a terrorist, and his goal was to release a potentially catastrophic cloud of deadly gases, explosives and caustic acids -- in unguarded cars, left abandoned -- then a U.S. Department of Homeland Security's planning scenario might apply: 17,500 people dead, another 10,000 suffering injuries and 100,000 more flooding trauma wards, convinced they've been poisoned. The environmental damage would take weeks to clean up, forcing the evacuation of as many as 70,000 residents from a city built on sin, military might and heavy industry

Less detailed and unlikely "Worst Case Scenario" plans filed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency suggest the gases that could be released by the reporter perched atop millions of pounds of zinc chloride, phosphoric and sulfuric acids, and chlorine gas could drift 18 miles and threaten 1.1 million people with death, displacement or injury

But, luckily, he was only a reporter.

Five years after terrorists murdered 2,996 people in the Sept. 11 attacks, the Trib embarked on a probe to see how well railroads and their customers secure lethal hazardous materials -- termed "hazmat" by first responders. The road map: Reports compiled since 2003 by the Federal Railroad Administration detailing defects in the way railroads and chemical plants conducted counter-terrorism security planning and worker training.

Armed with that data, the Trib penetrated 48 plants and the freight lines that service them to reach potentially catastrophic chemicals in populated parts of Seattle, Tacoma, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, San Francisco's Bay Area and the New Jersey suburbs, as well as two port facilities in Oregon and Washington.

"What you uncovered is a criminal tragedy, and it's a criminal tragedy that's just waiting to happen. It's also criminal what we haven't done about this," said U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Delaware, who has sponsored legislation designed to revamp rail hazmat security nationwide and pledges to hold hearings on the issue.

Biden has taken at least 7,000 round trips by rail from his home in Wilmington to Washington, D.C., since entering the Senate in 1972. He routinely talks to railworkers, and when he pulls into a depot, he scans for hazmat tankers, guards and gates.

He loves railroads so much that he wants to protect them by slashing tax cuts and take the extra cash to fund every recommendation of the 9/11 Commission that investigated the 2001 attacks. He demands more federal cops in the rail yards, more cameras and gates, less dangerous chemicals on the tracks and rerouting of particularly lethal shipments around big cities.

"All you have to do is look," Biden said. "I can walk into a freight yard right now, and I can put plastique explosive on a railcar and detonate it. This is a distant concern to many people in Washington, D.C., but I see and I hear about it every day and we have to do something about it."

The Association of American Railroads, with a membership hauling almost 90 percent of the nation's hazmat tank cars, said freight security has improved since 2001 but conceded more has to be done to protect 240,000 miles of mostly unguarded line.

"You've got to remember the open architecture of railroads," said Nancy Wilson, AAR vice president and director of security. "We're not static facilities. We cannot protect every railcar, every rail yard or every customer's facility all the time."

In the years since the Sept. 11 attacks, intelligence tips have warned about U.S. chemical plant targets and terrorists have hit freight trains abroad. Still, Homeland Security and the AAR insist there's no indication that terrorists are plotting hazmat rail attacks in the U.S. now.

Good thing, because the Trib found:

Little visible differences in security between the largest and smallest train lines. The Trib easily reached hazmat shipments or locomotives controlled by 12 railroads, ranging from giant Union Pacific to the tiny, city-owned Tacoma Municipal Beltline. Workers never challenged the reporter as he climbed trains, photographed derailing levers or peeked into signaling boxes controlling rail traffic.
No police presence. Despite long trips down tracks nationwide, no rail cops detained the reporter. At a Clifton, N.J., station where explosive railcars hug teeming commuter lines, a Transit Police cruiser idled unconcerned while the reporter spent an hour around hazmat cars. According to the railroads, fewer than 2,300 cops patrol the tracks, about one for every 100 miles.
Shoddy security even at 11 refineries, railroads and chemical plants bound by "stringent" voluntary guidelines created by the AAR and other industries. The Trib penetrated security at four railways adhering to AAR's guidelines. Seven plants that had voluntarily upgraded security to meet standards of their trade groups also had tracks open to terrorists.

No executive at a large railroad would talk to the Trib about the newspaper's findings. Local and state security officials in California, Washington and Georgia also were silent when the Trib tried to discuss hazmat security.

The Nevada Homeland Security Commission, however, is investigating shortfalls uncovered by the Trib's Vegas vacation.

"Closing gates, making sure workers and guards and police are aware of our chemicals, that's important," said Commission Supervisor Larry Casey. "Unfortunately, the farther we get from 9/11, the more people forget about staying vigilant.

"Then there's the funding issue. The federal pot gets smaller and smaller. The farther we get from the major event in our lives, the threat goes up while the money to stop it goes down."

Chlorine gas unguarded in the suburbs of Las Vegas. The Trib reached 11 tankers filled with deadly gases and acids inside plants or along tracks in one of America's largest cities.

In 2001, five of the 19 al-Qaida terrorists visited Las Vegas before hijacking airliners for suicide missions to Manhattan and Washington, D.C.

Las Vegas annually hosts more than 37 million visitors. The city received about $28 million in federal counter-terrorism funding last year, but officials have been told that's being scaled back, leaving almost nothing for safeguarding the tracks latticing the city.

According to Homeland Security's Inspector General, 90 percent of taxpayer anti-terrorism funding has gone to protecting aviation. In 2006, $4.6 billion flowed to securing U.S. airports, leaving $32 million for safeguarding surface transportation, including railroads.

The Burning of Atlanta

Following FRA's deficiency reports to 12 facilities near Atlanta, the Trib found numerous security snafus in one of Dixie's largest cities.

Along CSX lines in Dekalb County, a Trib reporter climbed unguarded stores of deadly insecticides, flammable petroleum distillates and acetone, a chemical that can trigger a vapor cloud explosion if leaked.

Since 2003, FRA has noted 53 defects with CSX counter-terrorism planning and training in five states, including Georgia.

A year ago, FRA reported that Bulkmatic's plant in the Atlanta suburbs failed to properly address potential intruders. A fence "locked" with almost 2 feet of slack meant a Trib reporter could stroll by employees there who made no effort to challenge him. Federal inspectors had previously written up Bulkmatic chemical operations there and in Buffalo and Chicago for security problems.

After visiting Alchem's Atlanta's caustic soda operation in 2005, an ...