Clean Sweep
Recent Bombings Underscore Need for Effective Detection
By Kelly M. Teal

The recent train bombing in Spain that killed hundreds of people, and the subsequent discovery of explosives under the high-speed rail line linking Madrid and Seville, underscores the imperative for tighter explosives-detection screening in America’s public venues, particularly as the U.S. government increases terror alerts for locations ranging from transit systems to landmarks. While managers of these facilities want to maintain a normal routine — ensuring ongoing numbers of visitors and uninterrupted revenue — current events dictate that might not always be possible.

The Mistral Group’s Expray Kit

“The unprotected facility is the one that’s going to get hit first,” says Barry Levine, CEO of Sperry West Corp., a maker of surveillance technologies based in San Diego. Ultimately, the level of explosivesdetection security you implement depends on how much you need to know about the people coming into and leaving your venues, as well as the amount of inconvenience to which you are willing to subject patrons — and how much screening they are willing to undergo.

Eyal Banai is president of The Mistral Group, a 16-year-old company that manufactures security solutions and provides consulting expertise. Banai emphasizes that evacuating thousands of people from a facility costs a lot of money and return visitors/customers, especially if the alarm turns out to be false. Therefore, he advises managers to “find a process or procedure that is practical.Where we are fitting into this is trying to provide the user tools.” He recommends the Mistral Group product Expray, an aerosol-based field test kit.

Control Screening’s EVD 3000 Handheld Trace Detector

A security officer can use Expray to determine whether an explosive is present, thereby ascertaining whether an evacuation is merited.

The officer sprays the aerosol onto an object to detect traces of explosives. “You can either collect the residue with some kind of a collection paper that we’re giving you or spray it directly on the object,” Banai explains. “In a matter of less than five seconds you will get a color reaction. And the minute you get a color reaction it means that you have an explosive.”

GE Ion Track’s Portable Device, VaporTracer

Expray works on objects, such as packages and backpacks, or even on people. It senses particles smaller than a microgram and works in any kind of weather — “even if it’s minus-20 or plus-100 [degrees],” says Banai.

Further, the aerosol does not require a power source and costs less than a dollar per test.

Banai also cites the product’s shelf life — a field officer can conduct a test one day and, a year later, use the same aerosol for another test. “There’s no real concern that if I open it, I have 24 hours to use it,” Banai says.

Mistral Group also developed Drop-Ex, a drop-tube system based on the same reagents (chemical agents for use in chemical reactions) as Expray, and usable in the field or in a laboratory.

Expray and Drop-Ex both catch a number of explosives including TNT, DNT, RDX and smokeless powder, as well as nitrate-based explosives.

Drop-Ex also detects chlorates and bromides — chemical compounds that can be combined to make explosives.

Portable Detectors

Perimeter sweeps often are the first line in explosives detection, meaning that security personnel need to be able to take a device with them as they inspect around fences and parking lots, under benches and so on. They have several options for portable explosives-detection machines.

GE Ion Track Inc.’s product for perimeter and non-invasive searches is the handheld VaporTracer, which uses positive and negative ions to find and identify explosives and narcotics.

Sperry West’s SpyderScope Searches Underneath a Vehicle for Explosives

It lets users switch between particle and vapor sampling; the company says swiping works best for the explosive PETN and the drugs heroin and marijuana, while vapors effectively locate dynamite, nitroglycerin and methamphetamine.

GE Ion Track’s equipment is based on contamination detection, explains James Bergen, director, public relations. “Equipment sensitivity goes to the nanogram and even picogram for some substances,” he says. (A nanogram is one-billionth of a gram and a picogram constitutes a trillionth of a gram.) He likens the equipment’s sensitivity to the idea of someone dissolving a packet of sugar into an Olympic-size swimming pool and still being able to pinpoint the sugar.

GE Ion Track’s equipment is in use by the TSA and will be in place at this year’s Olympic Games in Athens.

Control Screening LLC also sells a portable explosives trace detector, the EVD 3000. Dennis Cunningham, international sales director, says, using the tool, a security officer can check the outside perimeter and hand-carried items. The EVD 3000 can detect minute traces of materials including C-4,TNT, dynamite and Semtex. It processes samples immediately, giving results in seconds.

Mistral Group has the M600P, which perceives anomalies in an item. It uses low-level microwave energy, but the company claims the M600P is safer than other devices on the market because it does not rely on X-ray or nuclear technology. Scanning results appear on a meter and are given audibly.

Sperry West offers the SpyderScope, an under-car video camera. The product now is in its third generation, and in use at facilities including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, NASA and the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Austria. The SpyderScope rolls underneath vehicles; the sun-treated monitor is mounted on the handle, while the bottom part containing the camera features white LEDs for easy viewing from under the vehicle. Search time ranges from between 30 and 60 seconds.

Sperry West’s Levine adds the company can customize the SpyderScope, and says the apparatus has been adapted with recording capabilities for some clients.

D-Tect Technologies LLC, part of the Golan Group, works mostly with the aviation industry — namely Israel’s El Al airlines — but is expanding into the American market and accepting commissions for customized equipment.

Carlos A. Espitia, DTect’s operations manager, says D-Tect’s SDS-400P, the moveable version of the company’s fluoroscopic X-ray technology, views actual items, instead of still images. The X-ray technology can move articles around, and zoom in and out, Espitia says. “We can see liquid inside, where a still image looks like a solid object,” he says, adding the technology also sees powder. “[It] can detect just about anything without need for a dog,” Espitia says.

Walk-Through Systems

D-Tect’s SDS-400P Fluoroscopic X-ray Machine

Control Screening’s Cunningham brings up a good, maybe oft-overlooked point: using walk-through detectors causes lines to form, slowing visitors’ entry into a venue. Again, operations directors need to evaluate how much inconvenience they are willing to put their patrons through, given what could be at stake. To that end, GE Ion Track manufactures the EntryScan portal, billing it as offering “maximum security with minimum disruption.”

EntryScan complements Xray machines and metal detectors, automatically records data, provides networkcompatibility for remote operation and ferrets out a wide range of explosives and narcotics, based on the same ion technology as the VaporTracer. The product’s data sheet describes how it works: “The ... sample collection system takes advantage of a natural airflow phenomenon called the ‘human convection plume.’ This eliminates the need for forced air, which would stir up contaminants, dirt and dust, and enables EntryScan to acquire cleaner samples for higher detection- sensitivity. This design also requires fewer moving parts resulting in quieter operation, reduced weight and improved long-term reliability.” The walk-through device automatically controls traffic by giving visual prompts; if someone leaves before being told to exit, or if the machine finds explosives or narcotics, an alarm sounds, alerting security personnel.

GE Ion Track’s EntryScan Walk-Through Explosives Detector

D-Tect’s walk-through solution is the same as the SDS-400P, except that it is stationary. The technology is so detailed it even fixes on tiny wires.

All of these explosives-detection machines can be used in addition to trained dogs. As Mistral Group’s Banai says, “Dogs are efficient and should be part of a whole system, by all means.” When considering using dogs, make sure to do a realistic pre-test before signing any contracts, says Ed Seuter, managing director of the company, Explosive Countermeasures International Inc., in a presentation at ISC West in Las Vegas. (For further information, go to the company’s Web site www.nobombs.org/K9_questions.shtml and read our related story).

Call To Action

Current events unfortunately intensify the need for public venues to resist complacency in their security processes. Raids across the globe keep yielding arsenals of explosives. In early April, a British reporter was able to walk into a prominent soccer stadium and reach the terraces, carrying a bag that could have been filled with explosives, and that was never inspected. At the end of March, an angry miner in Bolivia strapped dynamite to his chest and blew himself up inside the country’s Congress. The explosion also killed two police officers. Indonesian police in March disarmed five homemade bombs found inside a suitcase left in a shopping mall luggage booth. The U.S.

government remains on high alert for similar threats and incidents, tasking public venue security directors and managers with numerous responsibilities, among them the pressing obligation to install and use explosives detectors that save lives.