Officials Ponder School Bus Terror Attack

You may remember that we covered a possible school bus terror threat back in September of 2007. At the time several school buses had been stolen in the Houston area and there was concern that they could be used in some type of attack. What you may have missed was the follow-up story in which we reported that 4 men had been arrested in connection with the thefts. It turns out they were scrapping and selling the buses for profit.

Is there a threat? Yes, but there is also the threat of someone shooting up a mall, tampering with food, detonating a bomb in a public building and thousands of other scenarios. You can’t live your life in fear of all of the possibilities. The fact remains that the odds of you ever actually being the victim of a terror attack are incredibly small.

The point we want to make is this. Be aware of your surroundings. If you see something unusual, report it. Take necessary precautions but don’t let those precautions dictate how you live your life.

Stories like this should not be used to cause fear and panic. They should be used to examine and re-evaluate risk. Once the risk is properly evaluated, reasonable (reasonable) security precautions can be put in place.

The man in charge of school bus safety across North Carolina has a nightmare terrorism scenario: Three bombs exploding simultaneously each on a different bus in a different city across the country.

“Imagine what that would do,” said Derek Graham, transportation chief with the N.C. Department of Public Instruction and president of a national group of school transportation directors.

“Imagine the economic impact if parents weren’t confident their children would be secure when they take the bus to school,” Graham said. “The nation’s school bus system is the largest system of public transportation. It’s just very vulnerable.”

That’s why local school bus drivers are getting training in spying suspicious activity and why, in Durham County, drivers peek under their buses every morning for anything odd.

But Graham and other school transportation leaders fear the federal government isn’t taking their concerns seriously.

The federal Transportation Security Administration has yet to begin a safety assessment ordered by Congress in August. Though the agency has poured billions of dollars into security for ports, railways, motor coaches and the air industry in the past six years, school leaders say it has done little for the millions of children who ride buses.

Last August, legislation signed by President Bush gave the TSA, part of the Department of Homeland Security, a year to develop an assessment of school bus security.

Five months later, though, little has been done.

U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, a Lillington Democrat and member of the House Homeland Security Committee, and U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, chairman of the committee, learned last week that the TSA has yet to develop a plan for how to go about the assessment.

“School buses have always been soft targets,” said Etheridge. “I’m kind of disappointed. In just a few months we expect this report, and I don’t see the urgency.”

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