1,000 Soldiers to Help Guard Airports

As many as 1,000 armed National Guard soldiers will be stationed at 31 California airports by next weekend, Gov. Gray Davis announced Friday at the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, before signing an official order putting troops on alert.

The number is five times what Davis said Thursday might be deployed at airports around the state in response to a request from President Bush that governors activate units for airport security.

Davis said Los Angeles International Airport will get troops but didn’t provide a complete list of the airfields, 30 of which are commercial. He said final details are being worked out, including what type of weapons the soldiers will carry and how many will be stationed at each airport.

Bush announced this week that he wants the troops to augment security at airports until federal security workers can be trained to take over. That could take four to six months, Davis said.

Davis said that merely paying airlines to increase private security workers or officers would not provide the level of training the government forces bring.

“This is not something we do lightly, but America is in a different place than we were before Sept. 11,” he said.

Shifting work from a military airfield to a commercial airport was just fine with Specialist Crystal Drayton of Tustin. She spent the last two weeks in New York tending to the family of her sister, who was on the 55th floor of the World Trade Center’s south tower when it was hit by a hijacked plane. Her sister was in intensive care at a Brooklyn hospital and remains hospitalized, she said.

“When I got back to California, I just volunteered to come in and be here,” she said.

First Sgt. Phillip Smith of Campo has been driving back and forth from San Diego County to oversee his Los Alamitos military police unit of 175 people. It is the only MP unit serving Los Angeles County, he said, and probably will be called on to send as many soldiers as possible to beef up airport security.

He said he had to turn away volunteers after his unit mobilized for base security following the terrorist attacks. Long-term military duty may be a hardship, but his troops aren’t complaining, he said.

“It’s overwhelming,” Smith said. “We were never expecting to have to do this, but if it helps out, that’s a good thing.”

Specialist Manuel Vargas of Wilmington said he has been on duty since Sept. 12, called away from his computer technician job. “If they need us, we’re willing to go,” he said.

Davis echoed Bush’s call for armed National Guard patrols to quell public fears about flying and to help an aviation industry that’s reeling from economic losses in the weeks since the terrorist attacks. Bush authorized as much as $150 million in federal funding to help states pay for the new security presence.