The Press-Enterprise September 4, 2004
False alarm empties terminal
ONTARIO: An explosives detector and airport dogs mistake cosmetics for something more sinister.
By Richard Brooks and John F. Berry
ONTARIO - Thousands of travelers started the holiday weekend standing outside an Ontario International Airport passenger terminal Friday after cosmetics inside a makeup case triggered a false alarm for explosives.
Airport Police Commanding Officer Alan Hyde said a machine that detects explosive chemicals gave a "false positive" reading to a special cloth that a federal screener had first rubbed over a carry-on bag.
Officials evacuated Terminal 4 for two hours after specially trained dogs also detected an explosive chemical in the bag, Hyde said.
"The machines are very sophisticated. The dogs are very sophisticated when it comes to detecting odors that could be associated with an explosive material," Hyde said.
"These dogs were just certified last week ... so they're right up to snuff, so to speak," he added.
About a thousand people were evacuated from the terminal moments after the dogs verified the suspicious scent at 12:01 p.m. Officials, including an Ontario Fire Department bomb squad, searched the terminal and gave the all-clear at 2:03 p.m. By then the waiting crowd had grown to several thousand. Passengers then filed into the terminal and jockeyed for flights.
Hyde said the bag owners were detained and then released. He did not give their names or hometowns.
"The passengers didn't do anything wrong," Hyde said. "But considering today's posture with terrorism, we don't take any chances."
The two-hour shutdown delayed about a dozen inbound flights as travelers were hustled out of Terminal 4, though Terminal 2 continued to operate normally, said airport spokeswoman Maria Fermin.
It was the first evacuation at the airport since August 2003, when a container of pickles triggered a similar false alarm, Fermin said.
Inbound and outbound passengers, as well as the people giving them rides, said they appreciate the evacuation despite the two-hour wait in 80-degree temperatures.
"I would be willing to wait 10 hours to get home safe to my children," said Fontana's Ed Allumbaugh, who waited with his wife and two friends for a flight to Las Vegas. "Post-9-11 warrants what they're doing."
Although eager to make flights, the evacuees adapted as they waited on a lush and watery lawn outside the terminal. Some read, some folded their arms, and many chatted on their cellular phones.
Nancy Grussing kicked off her sandals, called her office in Sacramento, and read 50 pages of "Survival of the Fittest" while leaning on two carry-on bags.
"Life is what you make of it," said Grussing, relaxing in the sun. "I could get cranky, yell and push people, but what good would that be?"
Screening-related evacuations occur sporadically at Ontario International and larger Los Angeles International Airport, both of which are operated by Los Angeles World Airports.
"This summer, we've had two terminal evacuations (at LAX) related to screening," said Paul Haney, a Los Angeles World Airports spokesman. He characterized the false-alarm evacuation rate for the two airports as very low, but he said he had no statistics available.
"Ontario is probably going to do 7 million (passengers) this year," he said. "If the rate was even one in a million, you'd have seven evacuations. And we don't have anywhere near seven a year."
False alarms can be triggered by many substances, ranging from certain food products to traces of fertilizer.
Occasional evacuations are likely to remain a nuisance for the foreseeable future, said John Pike, director of the defense think tank GlobalSecurity.Org.
"You're going to have to go through metal detectors 'til the end of time. And they're going to screen for explosives 'til the end of time," he said by phone from Alexandria, Va.
But the rate of false alarms will steadily diminish as computerized screening systems become more accurate, and the rate already is very low, he said.
"If (people) got caught in one evacuation today, they're probably not going to get caught up in another one," Pyke said. "In the grand scheme of things, the fact that people have to take their shoes off to get on an airplane ... probably outweighs this (evacuation problem) because everybody has to take their shoes off all the time, don't they?"
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