Ah, so each morning this week, four of us at work gathered to perform a Security Vulnerability Assessment. Sounds important right?

Basically, it’s a Process Hazard Review (ooooh big important words!) around plant safety to determine where our strategically weak points are in order to beef up our security. Keep in mind, we’ve started beefing up security after September 11, 2001, so we’re not that bad off.

Beefing. Heh.

Anyway, we have these 300-ton targets, er, Chlorine storage tanks where if they were to rupture, from, say, a bomb, the resulting vapor cloud would take out a 20-mile radius. And by take out, I mean make a lot of people stink like a swimming pool. And then, die.

So, after September 11, we installed concrete pillars around these storage tanks to prevent someone racing at full-speed head-on into them, as well as installing video cameras around the plant, and maintaining ‘round the clock security guards. We’ve closed the main gate whenever someone doesn’t need to get in or out, and installed turnstiles with electronic key card access. We have big yellow signs for visitors to hang around their necks, and orange armbands for the contractors. Basically, we’re pretty secure.

So the first day, we’re watching videos of different scenarios. The results of a 50-pound car bomb. The results of a pickup truck traveling at 55 mph straight into a cable reinforced fence. The truck was slingshotted (what is the past tense of slingshot?) backward about 30 feet. The sedan fared much worse. The UPS van did a nosedive into the ground before being slung backwards.

Then we saw the hydraulic braking system. Basically, this is a concrete barrier that hydraulically turns from flat against the ground, to 90 degrees, creating a barrier that sliced a truck in half, when ramming it head-on at 35 mph. Cool.

This sweet security measure costs about $60,000 for a three-foot section. Uninstalled. Pass.

We saw some cool video of people trying to scale an unscalable fence. It’s a fifteen foot section of fence that is concave outward (or concave inward for a prison) that, if the person can climb high enough, leaves them dangling. It was pretty hilarious watching these fools climb up, fall down, and climb back up again. Sort of like a live-action Wyle Coyote.

So we went through the plant, sectioned off critical areas as nodes, and evaluated each node to determine the existing countermeasures necessary to prevent different scenarios. Terrorists on foot, and traveling by vehicle, snipers, radical environmental groups, sabotage, etc. It was pretty fun, albeit redundant for much of it.

Then by using a check sheet, we determined that the results of a terrorist attack would be so little (by comparison to an attack at an oil refinery, or nuclear power plant) that our risk ranking was low. So basically, we’re pretty safe.

So yay, we went through that process to determine what we’ve already known. And it took a total of 16 hours to do it.

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