Call to Ease LAX Security Is Rejected

Despite impassioned pleas for help from hundreds of laid-off workers, Los Angeles International Airport officials unanimously agreed Tuesday that it is “prudent and necessary” to continue heightened security precautions, including a ban on private vehicles in the central terminal area.

Security measures at LAX remain among the toughest in the nation because of specific security threats that predated the terrorist attacks on the East Coast. The airport was the target of a millennium bomb plot that was thwarted with the arrest of a terrorist at the U.S.-Canadian border. LAX was also the original destination of the jetliners that slammed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon 15 days ago.

After a confidential briefing on security issues Tuesday, the city’s airport commissioners decided that the ban on private cars will remain in place despite vehement protests from workers and labor leaders that the action is costing people jobs.

“We’re being prudent, cautious,” one top airport official said after the closed-door session. “We were named as a target” once before, the official said, referring to the bomb plot around New Year’s Day 2000.

That experience has put the operators of LAX on edge and influenced their decision to restrict driving, they acknowledged for the first time Tuesday. Airport officials previously said the ban on private vehicles was a result of an FAA order to keep parked cars away from airport terminals.

The airport commission will review security measures again next week after conferring with federal officials. But in the meantime, the ban on private vehicles will remain in place.

With the attacks on New York and the Pentagon still fresh, Los Angeles airport officials are refusing to sacrifice security for convenience by allowing private cars and trucks to drive on the circular road past nine principal terminals.

The restriction on all vehicles except for shuttle buses, vans, taxis and motorists with special handicapped access has added to the lengthy delays experienced by most airline passengers.

It has also caused the layoff of 350 parking lot attendants and cashiers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck. Many are unsure how they will pay the rent for October, and they showed up en masse at the commission’s meeting to voice their concerns.

Crowding into an airport-area restaurant where the commission met Tuesday, some of the parking lot employees said airport officials went too far in shutting off vehicle access to the terminal area.

But managers of the nation’s third-busiest airport said LAX is vulnerable because its upper- and lower-deck roadways and parking structures lie within 300 feet of the terminal buildings, a distance federal officials believe could be unsafe in the event of a car bombing.

Officials also worry that reopening the airport to vehicles while the garages remain closed could cause gridlock on roadways and leave emergency personnel unable to move quickly if an incident occurred.

U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) whose district includes LAX, said in an interview that Ahmed Ressam’s trial showed that terrorists targeted the airport less than two years ago. “It is not inappropriate for people to be concerned about LAX,” she said.

Weeks before the millennium celebration, authorities arrested Ressam, an Algerian militant and an associate of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, in connection with a plot to detonate a bomb around New Year’s Day 2000.

Ressam was arrested at a dock in Port Angeles, Wash., with bomb-making chemicals, explosives and homemade timing devices in his car as he arrived on a ferry from Victoria, Canada. Ressam was convicted in April of conspiring with at least three others to place a suitcase packed with powerful explosives in a crowded LAX terminal.

Late last month, a federal grand jury in New York indicted a London-based Algerian and accused him of masterminding that plot. The indictment named Bin Laden, although he was not charged with a crime.

Airport officials said such specific threats have made them extra careful since the Sept. 11 attacks on the East Coast.

Emerging from the closed-door briefing, airport commission President Ted Stein said the panel voted unanimously “to endorse as prudent and necessary all of the security measures being taken at LAX at this time.”

The commission also directed the airport’s staff to develop alternatives that might involve reopening the central terminal area and parking structures to traffic.

Lydia Kennard, executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, said the airport was never designed for the volume of vehicles--100,000 on a normal day--that crowd the roads around the terminal buildings.

As she spoke, it was evident that security considerations ran head-on into the concerns of airport employees, particularly those who work in the parking garages, restaurants and retail stores.

Kennard estimated that sharp reductions in the number of airline flights and new security measures imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration after the terrorist attacks may cost the jobs of 10,000 to 12,000 workers at the airport alone. Those job losses could affect everyone from pilots to flight attendants, gate agents to mechanics, and restaurant workers to cleaning crews.

Unless passengers return to the sky quickly, she warned, 40,000 people in the region whose livelihood is linked to LAX could be out of work by late fall.

Miguel Contreras, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, told the airport commission the layoffs are going to have a huge economic impact. Many laid-off workers will have difficulty paying their rent and providing for their children.

“It is a very tough time,” Contreras told the commissioners and a standing-room-only crowd of displaced workers.

Contreras pointedly noted that parking lots are open at major airports in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and New York. He urged the commission to take a hard look at whether the closure of parking structures is truly needed. “In some ways, airport authorities overreacted,” he said.

Lonnie Bradley, a part-time cashier for Five Star Parking, which operates the airport’s parking lots, was among hundreds laid off Sept. 19.

“This is like a blow,” she said. “It came out of the blue.”

Although she had to pick up her last paycheck and turn in her ID badge last week, Bradley said she still has her uniform and is “keeping hope alive” that she will be recalled to work. Meanwhile, she has applied for unemployment benefits.

Until last week, Rahel Abiy and her father worked as parking lot cashiers. “We’re waiting until it’s open,” she said. “Maybe they will open it.”

Like many who work at the parking lots, Abiy is from Ethiopia. Scores of others are Latino.

Carlos Jauregui, who cleans the food court at Terminal 1, said his mother, Martha, a parking lot cashier, was the first in the family to lose her job. Now, Carlos and his brother, Miguel, who works at an airport restaurant, could also face layoffs.

“We don’t have any options,” Carlos Jauregui told the airport commissioners. If he and his brother end up out of work, the family could lose their car and be unable to make ends meet.

Fewer Restrictions at Other Airports

Echoing the sentiments of many in the crowd, he pleaded with airport officials to “do everything possible to make LAX safe and save our jobs.”

A spot survey of major airports confirmed that restrictions at LAX are tougher than elsewhere in the country.

Parking has been cut back slightly to conform to the 300-foot security zone at the New York area’s three major airports--John F. Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark, said Frank Pita, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. But private vehicles are still allowed.

Private cars can also drive and park at Boston’s Logan Airport, the departure point for the two hijacked jetliners that struck the World Trade Center.

Access roads are also open at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports, as well as San Francisco International Airport.

Security measures at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport are tighter. With the garage close to terminals, a variety of vehicles are banned from parking--including sport utility vehicles, vans and trucks. Every private vehicle entering the airport is stopped at a police checkpoint, said airport spokesman Bob Parker.

FAA spokeswoman Marcia Adams, citing security considerations, would not say whether any airports have applied for a waiver of the rule banning parking within 300 feet of terminals.

*

Times staff writers Josh Meyer and Ted Rohrlich contributed to this story.