Originally Posted by
FWAAA
In the wake of September 11, 2001, frequent checkpoint security "failures" resulted in the evacuation and rescreening of multiple LAX terminals even though the "failure" was at T-4 or T-5 or T-6, etc. The fear-mongers said that because of the tunnels, all connected terminals had to be re-screened.
I don't recall who, exactly, gave the order to close the tunnels but IIRC, all of the south side tunnels were locked in late 2001. In the years since, however, all of the tunnels were re-opened except for the T-4 to T-5 tunnel. With AS now in T-6, I'd vote to re-open the T-4 tunnel.
As I posted elsewhere, I had a significant role in the decision. There were many reasons for closing the tunnels at that time, some of which being not appropriate for discussion here. Over the years, most of the issues have been resolved to the point that the post- 9-11 decisions may no longer be relevant, supplanted by other reasons unknown to me.
I can touch briefly on one 2001-2002 problem - a security breach at T-4, under the protocols then in effect, could result in dumping and re-screening the entire South side (Terminals 4-8) under certain conditions and, in fact, that did happen more than once. Recovering from that impacted thousands of people at LAX, impacted connections across the country, took a lot of resources to resolve and was quite costly. Several solutions were brought forth that would have kept the tunnels open, but entities other than LAWA resisted them for their own reasons. That left tunnel closure as the last resort, ultimately being the only choice left and it was both imposed and accepted by default.