Better Port Cargo Screening Urged After Blast

A container explosion at a Port of Los Angeles terminal prompted three union locals Thursday to demand better screening of cargo going into and out of the nation’s busiest shipping basin.

Los Angeles Port Police ruled out terrorism and suspect that the container blew up Wednesday in a freak accident when batteries packed too close to a truck with an unsealed gas tank ignited fumes.

But union officials told hundreds of members Thursday that the explosion revealed security lapses that need immediate attention at the port complex.

“It could just as easily have been Al Qaeda packing that container,” Dave Arian, president of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union, Local 13, said after the union hall meeting. “And what we learned yesterday is that nobody would know that until it was too late.”

But Port Police Capt. Martin A. Renteria, one of the public officials who met with about 500 union members -- hastily assembled and many quite worried -- at the Wilmington labor hall, told the crowd that the explosion had “a one in a billion” chance of reoccurring.

And officials with Trans Pacific Container Service Corp., operator of the shipping terminal known as TraPac, where the container exploded at 1:35 p.m., countered that the incident had nothing to do with the company’s security measures.

“It was an error by the people who packaged the container,” not the port shipping company, said company Vice President Frank Pisano. “You can’t put flammable items with certain other items ... the items in this container were neither properly separated nor properly identified.... The opening and inspection of containers are handled by [federal] government agencies like Customs and Coast Guard,” not TraPac, Pisano said.

TraPac operates on West Coast waterfronts, transferring containers from shippers to ships.

Some details about Wednesday’s explosion are disputed by TraPac, unions and various emergency officials involved in the incident.

Port Police and fire officials said that a truck arrived about 1:30 p.m. at the TraPac terminal, where company security had access to an electronic manifest that showed the container was carrying “freight of all kind,” or FAK in port vernacular. The International Longshore & Warehouse Union claims that the container had no manifest.

The 20-foot container was lifted off the original truck, set onto a truck chassis used at terminals, and a driver was inside the cab when an explosion occurred. The back and ceiling of the container blew out, triggering a fire.

Thrown from the container was a blizzard of domestic items, from bras and soda cans to Top Ramen noodles. The largest item in the container was the pickup truck, officials said.

They said the container was bound for Micronesia.

The union alleged that the container bore no placards as required by federal regulations to signal flammable or hazardous contents within. The union called for swifter enactment of federal port security improvements scheduled to happen by July.

Renteria, the Port Police captain, said his agency and others are investigating the explosion, but that they will look at possible guidelines to better ensure specific information about cargo.

He also assured union members that officials are working hard toward a safe port, and suggested that the culprit in the explosion was the shipping broker hired to pack the freight for the sender.