Evacuations at LAX Are on the Wane

Despite a recent spate of highly publicized evacuations at Los Angeles International Airport, a survey of the events over the last six months shows that the incidents are actually dwindling, even as more passengers are returning to the skies.

Officials cleared out portions of the world’s third-busiest airport 41 times from September to Feb. 28, due to the discovery of suspicious items or security snafus, according to statistics compiled by the city agency that operates LAX. The pace of the evacuations has generally slowed over time--with none in January and five in February.

A spate of six evacuations the week of Feb. 25 to March 4 showed, however, that the potential for volatility at LAX’s concourses and roadways is still high. Although LAX administrators called that week an aberration, they concede that the airport is unlikely to ever return to the days when it had several evacuations a year.

The most recent incidents--prompted by increased vigilance by passengers and officials and new security regulations installed after the Sept. 11 skyjackings--can be expected from the nation’s evolving aviation security system, experts said.

LAX officials say they face unique conditions that make the airport more susceptible to security alerts, including the handling of a large share of “originating” flights and, thus, a disproportionate responsibility for screening baggage, the use of more explosives-detection machines than any other airport in the country, and heightened attentiveness at LAX since the facility was identified as a target in a late-1999 bombing plot.

“The goal in security for any public transportation system is to first ensure people’s safety, and second, to reduce disruptions,” said Brian Jenkins, a senior advisor to the president of the Rand Corp. and a former member of the White House Commission on Aviation Security. “In countries where they’ve had to deal with continuing terrorist threats, they’ve worked very hard not only to increase security measures but to develop response procedures to help them deal with bomb threats and suspicious packages very quickly, with a minimum amount of disruption.”

It’s difficult to compare LAX’s evacuation record with that of other large airports. When queried for this story, officials at many of the nation’s busiest airports said they haven’t tracked how many times they’ve cleared facilities since Sept. 11.

Most of the incidents at LAX--including abandoned boxes on Christmas Day that turned out to contain cookies--aren’t serious enough to be categorized as “security breaches” by federal officials.

These incidents occur when people are in areas where they should not be or when one or more passengers pass through a security checkpoint without being properly screened. Security breaches led the federal government to evacuate 59 terminals or concourses from Oct. 30 to March 7, according to Federal Aviation Administration statistics. These incidents led to 1,820 flight delays and 539 flight cancellations, the agency found.

Plans for More Bomb-Sniffing Dogs

LAX charted just two of those incidents. The most disruptive occurred March 4, when officials shut down the entire south side of the airport for several hours after security employees discovered that a metal detector in Terminal No. 4 had been unplugged for at least an hour. The incident required the evacuation of 10,000 passengers and delayed 400 flights.

LAX wasn’t the only airport plagued by nonworking security equipment. Unplugged metal detectors also forced evacuations at airports in Chicago, Boston, Birmingham, Ala., and Buffalo, N.Y., in the last month. These snafus prompted federal officials to create a program to retrofit security equipment plugs to make sure they stay put.

LAX will spend $10,000--$200 a plug--to put metal brackets over the plugs to secure them in their sockets.

The airport also expects to deploy more bomb-sniffing dogs, increasing the number from 10 to 20 this spring. Authorities hope that the presence of more dogs will help them more quickly “clear” unattended bags and prevent security shutdowns.

But even with improvements, LAX officials say the 40-year-old facility has many unique characteristics that make it more susceptible to evacuations, including:

* LAX handles a disproportionately large share of “originating” bags--those that are first entering the system. On average, 160,000 bags are checked a day at the airport, providing more opportunities for unattended bag calls.

* The airport has 13 explosives-detection machines, more than any other facility in the country. This can lead to more evacuations prompted by false alarms--such as one earlier this month, when officials evacuated part of Terminal No. 3 after a coffee grinder set off an alarm on one of the van-sized detectors.

* A foiled terrorist attack on LAX is also an ever-present reminder of the facility’s high profile. Algerian Ahmed Ressam was captured at the Canadian border in December 1999 with a load of explosives intended to blow up a terminal at LAX.

Connected Terminals Hinder Security

* Finally, many terminals at LAX are connected, making it more difficult for officials to isolate security breaches and sometimes forcing evacuations in multiple terminals when one has been “contaminated” by a suspect passenger.

Even so, officials say they will work with the new Transportation Security Administration, which took over screening contracts at the nation’s airports last month, to limit airport evacuations.

The TSA is devising a protocol that will help achieve some consistency in the way officials respond to the events across the country, said Rebecca Trexler, a TSA spokeswoman.

“We haven’t come up with the solutions yet,” Trexler said. “Right now we have consultants out there gathering data and looking at unique airports and seeing how they do it.”