Terror Warnings Highlight Limits of Readiness

By DAVID GREENBERG

Staff Reporter

Now that FBI Director Robert Mueller has raised the chilling possibility of suicide bombings in the United States, perhaps involving high-rises, building owners and security officials are scrambling to reexamine ways in which properties could be better protected.

What they’re finding is that despite recent efforts to beef up security in office buildings and parking lots, it’s next to impossible to prevent a suicide bombing. Plus, current evacuation plans in the event of such an attack are woefully inadequate.

“In terms of emergency evacuation and planning, I’m sure they have more work to do,” said Jack Riley, director of the public safety and justice research program at Rand Corp., the Santa Monica think tank. “Evacuation is of critical importance.”

Rand released a study last month showing that most of L.A.’s 800 high-rise buildings (those at least 75 feet tall) need better evacuation procedures and closer communication with emergency officials responding to the disaster. Riley said it is especially important to get people out of the area as quickly as possible because there might be follow-on attacks.

The Rand study was commissioned at the request of the Building Owners and Managers Association of Greater Los Angeles and the local chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association.

Local security and disaster officials remain fairly certain that a conventional bomb would leave intact most or all of a standard office building. As borne out by the continued attacks in Israel, only the building’s occupants near the explosion would most likely be in harm’s way.

“Destructive explosives can be brought onto a bus (or building) relatively easily and unobserved,” Riley said.

“But in terms of vulnerability, unless you’re standing in the wrong place at the wrong time you’re not likely to be harmed. The size of the bomb that a person could carry without arousing suspicion would only do superficial damage to most structures.”

The renewed warnings by White House officials about the inevitability of future attacks raise concerns on all fronts including economic. Already, extra security measures have jacked up building operating costs in recent months, and the need for additional retrofitting to better implement evacuation procedures likely would add to the bill.

Then there’s the liability question. The costs for catastrophic coverage is going up sharply and Westfield Corp. and Silverstein Partners, which had signed a 99-year lease with the developer of the World Trade Center, is now seeking as much as $7 billion from insurers as a result of the attacks.

Keeping terrorists away

Since Sept. 11, high-rise buildings, movie studios and retail venues have put in place a variety of systems controlling access from surrounding the perimeters with concrete blocks to installing surveillance systems and issuing employee identification badges.

Many sites also have more security guards who patrol parameters, work from check-in kiosks at entrances, operate X-ray and bomb detection machines, and search vehicle trucks with the help of bomb-sniffing dogs.

“If you stop the (suicide terrorist) outside, you will minimize the damage,” said Kevin Hall, vice president of operations for Culver City-based Cooke Protective Services Inc., whose clients include studios, high-rises and entertainment venues. “We’d rather have it out in the parking lot as opposed to him getting into the building where the workers are.”

But security officials also stress the importance of making office workers aware of evacuation routes, how to move in an orderly fashion and where to safely assemble once outside of the structure.

“We want employees of tenants to be fully informed of building evacuation procedures and the best way to accomplish that is through on-going training and education,” said Dan Gifford, a partner with MaguirePartners, which owns seven L.A. high-rise buildings. “Our tenants have been in full support of that.”

Evacuation procedures at high-rise buildings are the focus of a recently proposed ordinance before the L.A. City Council that calls for high-rises to file emergency plans with the fire department every six months. In addition, evacuation drills would be increased to twice annually from the current mandate of once per year.

The measure would make non-compliance a misdemeanor offense punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

“We want building owners and tenants to take this seriously,” said L.A. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, whose office drafted the ordinance. “We are a major city in the United States. We represent some of the best that America has to offer. Because of that, we are a target. Are we the most likely target? Probably not. But we can never be too prepared.”

In a separate action, he is pushing city officials to appropriate as much as $300,000 to hire four fire department personnel who would conduct evacuation drills and train others to do the same.

Attack ‘moderately likely’

The Rand report said that the possibility of an attack using bombs or other explosive devises in L.A. is “moderately likely,” while the prospect that high-rise buildings will be targets of large-scale incidents is “real” but less likely than towers on the East Coast.

BOMA, which represents 500 building owners and managers, plans to hold monthly seminars on security and emergency planning. Two have been held since Sept. 11.

“We bring in security and emergency preparedness experts to speak with our membership and make sure all the good information gets around,” said Barbara Harris, executive director of BOMA, which has its own security and emergency preparedness committee.

One subject expected to be brought before the council is whether the proposed ordinance should apply to smaller buildings, which have fewer occupants but also lack the budget for high-tech upgrades.

“(Terrorists) are probably here right now and looking for soft targets,” said Hall. “But most high-rises I’ve noticed are more fortified. I don’t see high rises as the biggest targets. Whatever kind of place it’s going to be, it will be where people congregate, where normal people shop and go for entertainment.”

Riley, however, stressed that “you can drive yourself to great distraction trying to predict what the next venue or type of attack is going to be. We need to be concerned about catastrophic vulnerabilities but also about the limits to our security measures as they relate to those vulnerabilities.”