A Closer Look at Hazmat Truck Security

As I reported yesterday a recent GAO report took TSA to task for their inadequate response to security in the commercial motor carrier industry. There is a lot of good information in the report, but one of the underlying conclusions is suspect because of the shortsighted way that GAO looked at terrorist attack data. Instead of security standards for all trucking, as suggested by GAO, TSA and Congress ought to look at regulating transportation of selected hazardous chemicals. Regulate Trucks or Explosives? GAO questioned TSA’s focus on hazmat transportation (page 8) when there have been few attacks on hazmat shipments and most trucking related terrorist attacks have been vehicle borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) (pages 11&12) attacks on other targets. From this fact GAO concluded that there should be more work on protecting the larger trucking industry from having their vehicles used in future attacks. As I noted yesterday, there are almost 12 million commercial trucks on the road in the United States. Trying to protect all of these from potential theft would be a very expensive proposition, and those costs would inevitably be passed onto consumers. To make matters more complicated, the two large scale VBIED attacks in the United States used rental trucks. To stop rental trucks from being used as VBIED would be next to impossible. Even if all truck renters had to be vetted through a terrorist data base check, it would not stop attacks like the Oklahoma City bombing that was conducted by a US citizen with no known connections to terrorists. Instead of focusing on the ‘vehicle’ component of VBIED it seems much more reasonable to focus on the ‘improvised explosive’ component. Without the explosive component there is no VBIED. DHS is already working on limiting unauthorized access to the most common ‘improvised explosive’ component, ammonium nitrate (AN). The CFATS program is working on protecting the locations that manufacture and store large quantities of AN. DHS is writing regulations to control and monitor sales of AN to ensure that the commercial grade fertilizers are not used in VBIEDs. The only component that is not being closely addressed is protecting the transfers of AN enroute, mainly because TSA is forced to rely on voluntary security measures for hazmat transportation. What Hazmat to Regulate? Detailed security regulations should certainly not be required for all hazardous material truck shipments. While successful attacks against any hazmat shipment would endanger people in the immediate vicinity of the attack (otherwise the material would not be hazmat), the scale of the endangered area would be relatively small for most materials. Extensive regulation to protect against small scale attacks is unreasonable. What is needed is a risk-based assessment of hazmat; much like what DHS did for the Appendix A list of ‘DHS chemicals of interest’ (COI) used to identify high-risk chemical facilities for CFATS regulations. The idea of identifying a chemical and the quantity of that chemical that triggers regulation is one that should be seriously considered. Using the same list of chemicals for both CFATS and CTATS (Chemical Trucking Anti-Terrorism Standards, my term) would make it easier to tie the shipper and receiver security requirements into the CFATS regulations. Serious consideration could even be given to using the same screening threshold quantity for both regulations. Some might argue that the Rail Security-Sensitive Material (RSSM) list would be a better starting point for discussing what material would be covered by CTATS, since these hazmat are already being regulated in transportation. The smaller number of covered materials in the RSSM list is predicated on the limited routes available for rail transportation and the extreme difficulty that someone would have in hijacking a rail car. What to Regulate? The harder thing to identify would be what CTATS would require in the way of security. Because of the problems that DHS has had with developing ‘standards’ for their risk-based performance standards, I would recommend that care should be taken in using the broad RBPS approach. I do believe that many security requirements should be based on the particular risk associated with the COI being transported. There are two security related requirements, however, that should apply to all covered hazmat shipments; communications and tracking Communications. The one thing that should be required for all hazmat shipment (covered by CTATS or not) would be two-way communications capability. Because of the hazards associated with the load being carried, the driver should be able to communicate with first responders in what ever area the vehicle is located. I don’t believe that the technology currently exists to be able to require long-haul drivers to directly contact local first responders at every point along their route. Satellite communications techniques certainly do exist to allow drivers to be able to contact a central dispatch facility. Tracking. Independently of the communications link there ought to be a separate system to track the location of hazmat trucks in real time. Again, this would certainly have to be satellite based to provide coverage across the wide expanses of this country. I would suggest that the tracking should be done by a government center (probably TSA’s Freedom Center) rather than just the trucking company. This way local law enforcement and emergency response personnel could access data on the location of covered hazmat shipments in their jurisdiction. To be effective CTATS would require a lot more thought by a variety of people. Regulation of selected hazardous material transportation is too important to be left to voluntary measures. TSA and Congress need to take a long hard look at what is needed to regulate these hazardous materials in transportation along the countries highways.