Newsstand - There's a bag in the baggage claim! Evacuate!

Long before the September 11th terrorist attacks it was known that the Islip Town Clowns were running the show at ISP, but this Newsday article (http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/longisland/ny-liair313606642dec31,0,2488196.story?coll=ny-linews-print) reveals just how far the buffoonery has come since then:

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Long Island MacArthur Airport was evacuated for about 1 1/2 hours yesterday afternoon when police found an unattended piece of luggage in the baggage claim area, Suffolk police and town officials said.</font>

Gee! A bag just sitting around waiting for its owner - in baggage claim! Better alert the FBI! For all we know, there could be scissors in the bathroom too!

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The bag, which contained only clothing and other personal items, aroused further suspicion when preliminary tests indicated it could possibly contain explosives, Suffolk Insp. Donna Engel said.</font>

Either explosives or chocolates; we can't say for sure. Then again, maybe it's a bar of soap or some books. Who knows?

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">A police robot removed the bag and brought it to a safe area nearby, where it was blown apart with a high-pressure water cannon.

An address was later found on the bag and efforts were being made to locate the owner.

..."Thanks to the efforts to everybody involved, a potential threat was avoided," [a town spokesperson] said.</font>

Hmmm... I wonder if the owner of the bag would feel the same way? "Oh, your bag - we blew it apart with a high-pressure water cannon. Aren't you glad we avoided a potential threat, though? Oh well - better luck next time." The sad part is most Americans would respond that indeed a great service had been done for National Security; after all, it's Saddam Hussein's fault we have to explode people's bags with water cannons.

Flights suspended, an airport evacuated, thousands of man-hours wasted... all to perform a controlled detonation of somebody's clothes that happened to be in an airport baggage claim. The risk of something like this happening is a lot scarier - and more real - than any hijacking threat. This is the philosophy of the new America made manifest: When confronted with risk, whether real or perceived, run around like chickens with their heads cut off. In the war on terror, we are our own worst enemy.

Stupid...stupid...stupid.

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"Give me Liberty or give me Death." - Patrick Henry

Chicken Little said it best...."the sky is falling, the sky is falling". That should be placed on our money and our constitution rewritten to include it too.

I might accept and understand the efforts to keep bad bags out of the airport.

But, the theory that a bag left unattended is a bomb is rather foolish. It only makes sense if you think the bad guy wants to avoid being around when it goes off.

Some simple logic here.

1 - To get a bag into this area, it should have already gone through various checks.

2 - We have already done all kinds of checks in the passengers.

3 - It is a KNOWN FACT that the primary terrorists today would PREFER to blow up with their bag. Therefore, they would NOT leave it unattended.

WAKE UP AMERICA!

To get a bag into this area, it should have already gone through various checks.

I don't think that anybody has to pass any kind of security-check for entering arrival areas (with a bag that didn't fly) on non-international flights in most US airports (sure not at SFO or IAD lately).

Thanks for the laughs http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Some simple logic here.

1 - To get a bag into this area, it should have already gone through various checks.

2 - We have already done all kinds of checks in the passengers.

3 - It is a KNOWN FACT that the primary terrorists today would PREFER to blow up with their bag. Therefore, they would NOT leave it unattended
</font>

1) Not true, as a lot of baggage claims are located outside the sterile area and dropping off a bag in a baggage claim wouldn't go through screening.

And like some are stateing, "A bag left in baggage claim, oh no". People who want to cause some kind of harm might just do that. Don't always assume it's going to be a terrorists though.

2)Checks of passengers are done at checkpoints, if they don't fly and just decide to go to a baggage claim, their is nothing stopping them.

3)You can't assume that ever threat to a plane is going to come from primary terrorists, or a huge hole gets left open in security.

Terrorism 101 or Terrorism for Dummies

1)Leave $15 suitcase in bag claim area.

2)Go home.

3)Watch over $100,000 worth of reactionary idiocy and inconvenience unfold on the evening news.

4)Repeat as desired.

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"Give me Liberty or give me Death." - Patrick Henry

A police robot removed the bag and brought it to a safe area nearby

Robocop? I didn't know the police was outsourcing too. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

[This message has been edited by Cygnus X-1 (edited Jan 01, 2004).]

Sorry about some inaccuracies.

I did not take the time to realize it was in baggage claim, which is basically open to the public.

Unlike the first few 100 rows of parking that are not available.

And what does it mean to avoid "a potential threat"? Isn't every travelling passenger a potential threat from the perspective of public safety? This is why we all go through security checkpoints, etc.--to separate those who are actual threats from those who are not. If something is not a potential threat, why are we bothering to waste resources on screening it? Threat assessment is intended to separate potential from actual threats.

[This message has been edited by chalf (edited Jan 01, 2004).]

The "potential threat" comment was a lie. There was no potential threat involved - it was a bag full of clothes. The talk about avoiding a threat is nonsense made up by a town PR jockey who was instructed to come up with something more flattering than, "Boy, we really screwed this one up" or "Gee, that was an awful lot of havoc to cause for nothing," either of which would have been more accurate.