Gotta Love LNG...and Terrorists...In Boston
Beware the accidental terrorists
By Peter Gelzinis | Friday, December 7, 2007 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo by Patrick Whittemore
One year before Chad LaFrance unleashed an inferno on Everett’s Main Street, I sat in the Boston City Council chambers listening to Richard A. Clarke, the elegant high priest of counter-terrorism, scare the bejeezus out of me with his imaginary version of hell.
The man who once demystified terrorism for both Bill Clinton and George Bush described in harrowing detail how Boston Harbor and its surrounding neighborhoods would be incinerated in a shroud of fire, if an LNG tanker were to explode on its way to the Distrigas terminal in Everett.
Now, the fact that Clarke was being paid by a firm hoping to build an LNG facility about 20 miles away off the coast of Hull did not make his pools of fire on the water shtick any less frightening. Forget Dante, I live within the first circle of Richard Clarke’s hell, that half-mile radius that would be toasted in the initial fireball.
I should be terrified, I know. But the comforting thing about living so close to Boston Harbor is that I get to see with my own eyes how the world stands still every time an LNG tanker sails into town.
No planes land at Logan or fly overhead save for watchful state police helicopters. No vessels can be on the water for at least a half-mile in any direction, unless they want to be intercepted by those Coast Guard jet boats with the machine guns on the bow.
Since Richard Clarke laid his Dr. Doomsday scenario on me, at least 100 LNG tankers have made the methodical, and uneventful, trip into the harbor and up the Mystic River. Thousands have docked over the past 30 winters.
Still, my mayor, Tom Menino, and a slightly hysterical U.S. Rep. Ed Markey want me to know that an LNG explosion would be 100,000 times worse than what happened at Sweetser Circle.
And indeed it would be if an accidental terrorist like Chad LaFrance happened to be on the captain’s bridge of an LNG. Since that awful morning in September, we have been conditioned to guard against all kinds of exotic threats.
At about 1:35 Wednesday morning, we were reminded that all it takes to trigger an apocalypse is a truck driver with a checkered record hauling 9,400 gallons of gasoline through a residential neighborhood on a bitterly cold night.
Chad LaFrance doesn’t look like the kind of guy who would set off any Homeland Security alarms. Yet, he is the man who triggered a cataclysm that upended the lives of several hundred people.
No, it had nothing to do with any malevolence. In all likelihood, Chad LaFrance was only looking to make time, to rush a full load over empty streets. But that doesn’t change the fact that a tanker truck filled with nearly 10,000 gallons of gasoline is, in fact, a rolling bomb. And they are everywhere.
Ed Markey and Tom Menino might want to ask those families who used to live on Main Street if they ever pondered the threat posed by those LNGs docking at the far end of their neighborhood. Ah, but then they are hardly in the mood to ruminate over an imaginary doomsday.
By the grace of God they managed to survive a hell that no terrorism expert warned them about. If an LNG tanker is surrounded by armed Coast Guard vessels and state police choppers every time one sails into Boston, perhaps we ought to consider much tighter surveillance of all the Chad LaFrances out there who climb into the cabs of trucks carrying the potential to destroy neighborhoods.
Pretty much everything that Richard Clarke envisioned a year ago at City Hall - the great balls of fire and the radiant heat that would spread the destruction - it all came to pass on Main Street in Everett in the wee small hours of Wednesday morning. And it didn’t come via a missile, a hijacked plane or an IED. No, hell arrived courtesy of a truck driver with a shabby driving record, a sickly bank account and plenty of open road.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1049315
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© Copyright by the Boston Herald and Herald Media.
By Peter Gelzinis | Friday, December 7, 2007 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo by Patrick Whittemore
One year before Chad LaFrance unleashed an inferno on Everett’s Main Street, I sat in the Boston City Council chambers listening to Richard A. Clarke, the elegant high priest of counter-terrorism, scare the bejeezus out of me with his imaginary version of hell.
The man who once demystified terrorism for both Bill Clinton and George Bush described in harrowing detail how Boston Harbor and its surrounding neighborhoods would be incinerated in a shroud of fire, if an LNG tanker were to explode on its way to the Distrigas terminal in Everett.
Now, the fact that Clarke was being paid by a firm hoping to build an LNG facility about 20 miles away off the coast of Hull did not make his pools of fire on the water shtick any less frightening. Forget Dante, I live within the first circle of Richard Clarke’s hell, that half-mile radius that would be toasted in the initial fireball.
I should be terrified, I know. But the comforting thing about living so close to Boston Harbor is that I get to see with my own eyes how the world stands still every time an LNG tanker sails into town.
No planes land at Logan or fly overhead save for watchful state police helicopters. No vessels can be on the water for at least a half-mile in any direction, unless they want to be intercepted by those Coast Guard jet boats with the machine guns on the bow.
Since Richard Clarke laid his Dr. Doomsday scenario on me, at least 100 LNG tankers have made the methodical, and uneventful, trip into the harbor and up the Mystic River. Thousands have docked over the past 30 winters.
Still, my mayor, Tom Menino, and a slightly hysterical U.S. Rep. Ed Markey want me to know that an LNG explosion would be 100,000 times worse than what happened at Sweetser Circle.
And indeed it would be if an accidental terrorist like Chad LaFrance happened to be on the captain’s bridge of an LNG. Since that awful morning in September, we have been conditioned to guard against all kinds of exotic threats.
At about 1:35 Wednesday morning, we were reminded that all it takes to trigger an apocalypse is a truck driver with a checkered record hauling 9,400 gallons of gasoline through a residential neighborhood on a bitterly cold night.
Chad LaFrance doesn’t look like the kind of guy who would set off any Homeland Security alarms. Yet, he is the man who triggered a cataclysm that upended the lives of several hundred people.
No, it had nothing to do with any malevolence. In all likelihood, Chad LaFrance was only looking to make time, to rush a full load over empty streets. But that doesn’t change the fact that a tanker truck filled with nearly 10,000 gallons of gasoline is, in fact, a rolling bomb. And they are everywhere.
Ed Markey and Tom Menino might want to ask those families who used to live on Main Street if they ever pondered the threat posed by those LNGs docking at the far end of their neighborhood. Ah, but then they are hardly in the mood to ruminate over an imaginary doomsday.
By the grace of God they managed to survive a hell that no terrorism expert warned them about. If an LNG tanker is surrounded by armed Coast Guard vessels and state police choppers every time one sails into Boston, perhaps we ought to consider much tighter surveillance of all the Chad LaFrances out there who climb into the cabs of trucks carrying the potential to destroy neighborhoods.
Pretty much everything that Richard Clarke envisioned a year ago at City Hall - the great balls of fire and the radiant heat that would spread the destruction - it all came to pass on Main Street in Everett in the wee small hours of Wednesday morning. And it didn’t come via a missile, a hijacked plane or an IED. No, hell arrived courtesy of a truck driver with a shabby driving record, a sickly bank account and plenty of open road.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1049315
Related Articles:
Homeless families shaken but unbowed
/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1049318
Deficient bridge put fuel trucks on rotary
/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1049317
Rocky road for troubled trucker
/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1049316
© Copyright by the Boston Herald and Herald Media.
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