Plant Security and the Shooter

Nancy Bartels at ControlGlobal.com has an interesting post on their SoundOff blog about the security issues involved with incidents like yesterday’s ‘disgruntled employee’ shooting at the ABB manufacturing facility in St. Louis. While she addressed the security-safety issue I would like to point out that the site security plans being developed and implemented at 6,000+ high-risk chemical facilities across the country should help to reduce the occurrence of these type incidents. The security measures required to protect plants against terrorist attacks also have some utility in preventing these types of attacks. Risk-Based Performance Standard #3, Screen and Control Access, addresses efforts to limit the introduction of hazardous devices (which certainly should include firearms) into the facility. The Summary Metric for all four tier levels includes language requiring the screening process to deter “the unauthorized introduction of dangerous substances and devices to the facility” (pg 46). The idea of a homicidally enraged employee stalking a facility with loaded weapons strikes fear into the heart of any facility manager. At a high-risk chemical facility, with containers of dangerous chemicals sitting around, the risk becomes even higher. Even if the employee does not specifically target those containers, high-speed projectiles from firearms are likely to puncture those containers anyway. The releases from the small bullet holes will probably be less than catastrophic. That will be little comfort to employees that are exposed to those chemicals while they are trying to hide from the direct attack by weapon wielding employee. The prevention of these types of attacks is not specifically the target of the CFATS regulations. High-risk facility management can, however, take some comfort that the actions they take to meet the DHS requirements for anti-terror measures will also help protect their employees from random acts of employee rage.