Houston port placed under heavy protection

Sig Christenson Express-News Military Writer

Web Posted: 10/22/2001 12:00:00 AM

OFF THE BOLIVAR PENINSULA — As their Coast Guard utility boat bobs on the choppy sea, Petty Officer John Bafia and five other men carrying 9 mm handguns time their jumps onto another ship filled with highly flammable liquefied petroleum gas.

The Chemtrans Christian, anchored just offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, is the site for this latest round in "High-Interest Vessel" boarding — a procedure instituted in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that have put the Coast Guard on its highest state of alert since World War II, keeping an eye on more than 360 ports and 95,000 miles of U.S. shoreline.

An unprecedented flurry of safety measures, including the escorting of cruise ships in and out of some ports, have been implemented in recent weeks by the Coast Guard.

"I think right now people in America are seeing the Coast Guard in a different light than they saw us before," said Petty Officer Brian Day, 24, of La Marque. "I think not all, but a good majority, of the civilian population have the idea that the Coast Guard is the TV show 'Baywatch,' and a lot of all we do is search and rescue."

The Coast Guard has long boarded vessels for safety and law enforcement purposes, its crew members generally unarmed. But high-interest boardings now being done around the nation are new, with Coast Guard crews wearing sidearms.

Boardings like this one, 4.5 miles east of Galveston, are designed to stop a terrorist from targeting ships and petrochemical facilities along the 50-mile Houston Ship Channel and four busy nearby ports. Authorities study a ship's previous ports of call and her crew's backgrounds in deciding to conduct a high-interest boarding.

The level of security differs on the boardings, depending on the potential for trouble, with some missions including FBI, Immigration and Naturalization Service and U.S. Customs agents. On this day the Coast Guard alone boards the ship, checking logbooks, cargo manifests and the passports of 18 crew members, who come from the Philippines and parts of Europe.

Like all the others so far in the Houston-Galveston area, this boarding took place without incident, but Day and others can't predict when, where or how another attack might come.

"You don't know if it's going to happen in our port," said Bafia, 28, of Galveston.

"We are no more capable of stopping every incident, protecting against every eventuality at the port than we are any other location," Harris County Judge Robert Eckels said.

"If someone wants to be on the (San Antonio) River Walk with a bomb in a suitcase and set it off in a restaurant or on Sixth Street in Austin or in Houston in the new downtown entertainment district, it's impossible to totally protect any of those areas just like it's impossible to totally protect all the refineries and transportation facilities in and around the port."

A day last week spent with Coast Guard crews working the gulf and the Houston Ship Channel brings that point home.

On their rough ride to Chemtrans Christian, the Coast Guard crew of 10 passes a crude oil tanker, a chemical tanker, a barge, a container ship, an offshore supply vessel and two shrimp boats.

Each day, 400 ships, tugs and barges enter the Port of Houston, the nation's No. 2 facility in tonnage, said Capt. Kevin Cook, who oversees 300 Coast Guardsmen based in three Houston-Galveston offices. Just under 7,000 oceangoing deep-sea vessels and 100,000 barges ply the ship channel's waters each year, and Houston typically ranks first in foreign tonnage among U.S. ports — annually handling 175 million tons of cargo.

There are 120 refineries and petrochemical plants along the ship channel and in the industrial-chemical area of the city, said Wade Battles, managing director of the Port of Houston Authority. Grain elevators, steel manufacturers and three small shipyards that build barges, tugs and smaller vessels are part of the complex, as are plants that create such products as petroleum coke, asphalt, chemical fertilizers, herbicides and plastics.

Half the nation's petrochemical products and 25 percent of its gasoline are produced at refineries within a 175-mile radius of the city, said David McCollum of the Greater Houston Partnership.

Some of the biggest plants are here, too. Exxon Mobil's largest refinery in America sits on the ship channel in Baytown, east of Houston. Across an adjacent channel is Shell Oil's largest U.S. refinery.

"It is a bomb waiting to explode," said retired Army Col. David Hackworth, a syndicated columnist, who warned that if an attack rocks Houston's industrial area "we all better get our bicycles out because that's America's main gas station."

Even a slight production drop could spark sharp fuel price increases in the Midwest and East Coast, where three pipelines deliver much of both regions' gasoline, said R. Preston McAfee, the Murray S. Johnson Chair in Economics at the University of Texas in Austin. A supply disruption of only 5 percent could increase pump prices by 25 cents to 50 cents a gallon, he said.

The Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon worries less about an attack on Houston's refineries, in part because it would take more than one bomb to affect the economy. He did echo McAfee's concern about an attack on pipelines.

The vulnerability of the U.S. oil delivery system was illustrated earlier this month when a man fired a bullet into the trans-Alaska pipeline, causing it to spew 285,600 gallons of oil. It was the biggest oil spill in the pipeline's 24-year history and it was forced to shut down.

In protecting the petrochemcial industry, the Coast Guard has help.

Battles, of the Port of Houston Authority, said his agency's 50-member police force works 12-hour shifts, increasing its manpower by one third. Refining companies have bolstered internal plant security, and crews that once had access to plants and terminals after coming to port no longer are allowed to leave their ships.

The Coast Guard works with local, state and federal law enforcement authorities, uses remote cameras posted at key points along the ship channel to spot trouble, and now requires ships to forward their crew lists 96 hours before arriving in port. It called in part-time sailors during the past month.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Paul Keough, 39, and dozens of other Coast Guard reservists have been called away from their regular jobs as America works to bolster homeland defense.

As Ron Dearmin guides a small powerboat past rusting warehouses and refineries fronting the ship channel, Keough watches for the little things.

After scaling a ladder on a pier, he talks with a tanker worker, asking if someone is serving on roving deck patrol. Later, Keough, a 21-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department, takes note of a tankerman in blue coveralls walking on a barge.

His absence would be a sign of trouble because the tankerman is required to be there.

"Sometimes it's the most inconspicuous things that you pass by that someone might capitalize on," Keough said.

Keough and Dearmin have sacrificed to be here.

The Coast Guard call-up soon will cost Keough two-thirds of his $66,000-a-year salary. Dearmin, an officer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Enforcement, had to leave his wife, Mary, and seven children back home in Carriere, Miss.

He's missed birthday parties for daughters Sarah, 14, and Anna, 18, this past week, and he will be far from home when the family marks Thanksgiving.

"When I go to work every day I'm just the same. I'm not anxious or concerned — I have my life in order," said Dearmin, 53, a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam.

"I wouldn't want to not be around to see my boys grow up, but I know where I'm going. For me, God is my shield, and because of that I can be confident no matter what."

-- Anonymous, October 22, 2001