Vehicle Access and Parking Lots

Because the Forest Service is a United States Government agency, it is reasonable to assume that its facilities have been elevated a notch or two in the targeting plans of those who want to damage or discredit the United States Government or the Forest Service.

Vehicles of all shapes and sizes are no longer just a means of transporting people and benign cargo. They have become the delivery method of choice for very destructive packages. On February 26, 1993, terrorists detonated explosives in a rental truck parked on a ramp of the New York World Trade Center in an unsuccessful attempt to destroy the building. On April 19, 1995, explosives in another rental truck were detonated next to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and essentially destroying the building.

There are very few valid reasons for allowing uninspected motor vehicles to park too close to any Federal facility. How close is too close?

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms conducted tests to determine recommended evacuation distances for various quantities of explosives. Tests determined that a compact sedan could carry the equivalent of 500 pounds of TNT. The recommended building evacuation distance was 320 feet, based on an unstrengthened building’s ability to withstand severe damage or collapse. The outdoor evacuation distance was 1,500 feet, based on the distance materials might be thrown by the explosion or the hazard of breaking or falling glass. A small moving van or delivery truck can carry the equivalent of 10,000 pounds of TNT. The building evacuation distance for that much explosive is 860 feet. The outdoor evacuation distance is 3,750 feet.

It is probably unrealistic to expect that vehicles will never be allowed closer than 300 feet to Forest Service facilities, let alone 3,750 feet. Indeed, emergency fire and medical vehicle response vehicles need to be extremely close to a facility to respond effectively to many emergencies. So what can a facility manager do?

• In the design phase for a new facility, include effective barriers that prevent uncontrolled vehicle access on roadways near the facility. An effective barrier is one that cannot be run over or penetrated by a moving vehicle. If emergency or utility workers need to bring their vehicles close to the building, arrange for an authorized employee to remove the barriers temporarily. Landscaping should be designed so that a roadway barrier cannot be bypassed by simply driving around it.
  
  
• Too often a facility will install impressive-looking and quite effective bollards (strong posts) on a vehicle access road but leave the nice, flat lawn surrounding the bollards unsecured. The bad news for facility managers is that a suicidal attacker is not concerned about ruining your lawn.
  
  
• Government vehicles should be parked in a secured parking lot with strict access control. If the parking lot is not constantly manned by at least one security officer, it must be under constant and attentive video surveillance. Electronic access control that opens and closes an effective vehicle barrier should be adopted. Even then, the vehicles need to be parked far enough from the building to prevent damage from fire or explosion if one or more vehicles catch fire. Vehicles capable of inflicting the most damage (such as gasoline or LPG trucks) should be parked farthest away from the building. Vehicles that pose the least threat should be parked the closest.

This secured parking lot also should include some spaces for special needs parking. Special needs parking is for vehicles (including personally owned vehicles) operated by employees who may be at greater risk of violence. This group might include an employee with a restraining order against an abusive spouse or an employee who has been credibly threatened by someone.

The secured parking lot should be laid out so that security officers and video cameras can see everywhere inside the lot and in the area surrounding the lot.

• Parking for employees’ personally owned vehicles should be in the vicinity of the employee entrance. To the greatest extent possible, this parking should be inconveniently far from building emergency exits, discouraging employees from using those exits as “convenience” accesses to their vehicles. Because emergency exits have no outside hardware permitting entry into the building, employees tend to prop open building emergency exits when they go to their cars.

This is not to recommend that employees’ vehicles be allowed to park close to the building. Employee’s vehicles are only slightly more secure than those belonging to the general public. There is nothing to prevent someone from attaching an explosive device to the gasoline tank of an employee’s car or pickup and detonating the explosive once the unwitting employee has parked. In some circumstances, disgruntled employees also may represent a threat.

The employees’ parking area should be fenced, have controlled access, be well-lighted, and have video surveillance. The walking route between the employee parking lot and the employee entrance should offer no cover or concealment.

Emergency alarms and intercoms should be considered to enable an employee to summon help in an emergency.

• Customer or visitor parking should be as far from the building as possible. This parking area is essentially an uncontrolled, public parking lot into which anyone can drive a vehicle of almost any size (including rental trucks).

This lot should be designed to allow only pedestrian (including wheelchair) traffic between the lot and the building. The terrain between the parking lot and the building should be an absolute barrier to vehicle traffic. Where possible, deep-rooted mature trees with year-round heavy foliage should be positioned between the parking lot and the building. Heavy foliage attenuates the blast and fragments from an exploding vehicle. It should be extremely difficult or downright impossible to drive a motor vehicle of any size from the visitor parking lot to the building.

If customers routinely pick up small, inexpensive items such as brochures and other materials that do not require personal interaction, consider using an information kiosk in the visitor’s parking lot to dispense these items.

The receptionist should be able to observe customers or visitors who approach the building from the parking lot before they reach the building’s entrance.

• Make every effort to reduce the number of vehicles that drive close to the building. If space permits, consider constructing a small building adjacent to the visitors’ parking lot. The building would be used to receive and inspect all deliveries of mail, parcels, and other materials. Require all service and delivery vehicles to check in at this remote reception facility.

Whenever possible, items would be left there for inspection before being carried into the building by Forest Service employees. Service providers should be required to have a verified appointment that can be confirmed at the remote reception facility. Depending on the level of security required, persons with confirmed appointments who need to drive to the main building could have their vehicle searched before being escorted to the main building by a Forest Service employee.

This remote reception facility would not need to be on the Forest Service facility’s property. It could be rented on another property nearby. The advantage of a remote reception facility is that if a suspicious item was delivered, the main facility might not have to be evacuated.

Although the suggestion of a remote reception facility may seem like overreaction, recall that the U.S. Postal Service’s Brentwood mail processing facility in Washington, DC, had to be evacuated and decontaminated after it became tainted with anthrax during the 2001 anthrax attacks. It did not reopen until December 2003.

Should it become necessary to evacuate the facility when responding to a confirmed or credible threat, it is important to be able to account for all persons authorized to be in the facility. As part of their facility emergency plan, most agencies designate fixed assembly points, also called rally points, where evacuees can assemble and be accounted for. These rally points are often in the public parking lot. The public parking lot should never be used as a designated assembly point if more secure locations are available. Here’s why.

Assuming that the Forest Service building itself is reasonably secure from attack, an attacker’s best hope of gaining access to employees is to get them out of the building. That might be accomplished by calling in a bomb threat to the facility. Because the vehicles in the public parking lot have not been searched and the public has not been screened, the attacker might have arranged to have a car containing a few hundred pounds of explosives parked in the visitor’s parking space closest to the assembling point.

A better choice for an assembly point might be somewhere else in the employee parking lot that has been properly secured. Another approach would be for assembly points to be unpredictably and spontaneously selected by designated, trained, and prepared Forest Service employees. Employees could be instructed to leave through emergency exits and look for an employee wearing a distinctive cap or vest and carrying a distinctive marker on a pole