| | OT : High Alert On Bay
By Thomas Peele, Contra Costa Times
SAN FRANCISCO BAY -- They joked around for a moment, four Coast Guardsmen on a patrol boat, sailing past Fishermen's Wharf on a fogless morning, lost in conversation about football and friends as if nothing had changed.
Then they swung around and gunned the engine and in a minute cruised under the Bay Bridge, and the light talk stopped. They grew grim-faced and ran closely past a bridge support, concrete and steel rising from the gray-blue water, looking, looking. Then looking again.
To the south, in the distance, a line of huge, foreign-flagged container ships rode at anchor. Some already had unloaded cargo at the Port of Oakland, the nation's fourth-busiest seaport. Others waited. All had sailed under both the Bay and Golden Gate bridges.
In post-Sept. 11 America, cargo ships ostensibly carrying goods like car parts and stuffed animals below interstate highways on stilts suddenly represent risks. Like the rest of the country, the Coast Guard can take little at face value these days.
They kept looking. The ships anchored where they were supposed to. Things seemed in order.
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But the idea of a rogue crew exploding a ship near a bridge or refinery, or ramming it into a crowded ferry or dock, no longer seems the stuff of B movies.
The Coast Guard stands at high alert. Perhaps not since it increased patrols along the seaboards after Nazi saboteurs landed from U-boats on Long Island and Florida in May 1942 has it confronted such a tangible threat.
All along the nation's coasts, it now stops inbound ships -- known as deep draft vessels -- for inspections a safe distance from port.
Cargo ships headed through the Golden Gate face a 378-foot Coast Guard cutter 12 miles at sea. Boardings take place; manifests and crew lists undergo increased scrutiny.
When bar pilots -- the people who sail the ships into local waters -- go aboard, armed guards accompany them and stay. The Coast Guard estimates that about 20 to 25 ship "movements' occur in the Bay daily. That includes vessels arriving, departing and moving to and from local ports.
Inbound ships must also provide at least 24-hour notice of their destination, cargo and crew before arriving at the checkpoint, said Capt. Tim S. Sullivan, commander of Coast Guard Group San Francisco, which includes much of Northern California. The Coast Guard delays each vessel several hours, Sullivan said.
The impact at the port remains minimal because the ships can adjust their speeds at sea to make up for lost time, said the port's strategic marketing manager, Dan Westerlin.
"We're trying to maintain business," said Kenny Levin, a spokesman for the San Francisco Bar Pilots. The pilots, he said, welcome their armed escorts, called "sea marshals." "We're working with them," he said.
Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Carter, Coast Guard spokesman, said the armed guards also accompany the pilots when they sail the ships out of San Francisco Bay because "vessels could be used as weapons of mass destruction" at any time.
The program began Sept. 16 and was recently expanded to other California ports. It could be also be expanded nationally, he said.
Not all ships carry the guards, he said. Officers pick those that do based on a "risk assessment," Carter said, adding that he could not discuss specifics.
The United States already bans ships that sail under the flags of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Libya Sudan, North Korea and Yugoslavia from its ports. During the offshore stops, the Coast Guard now checks crew lists for sailors from countries with large populations of Islamic militants.
Westerlin said that he doubted a sailor from Pakistan would be allowed ashore in Oakland, although he knew of no specific instances of keeping people aboard ship.
Carter, who is based in Alameda, and Dan Dewell, a spokesman in Washington, said that no bans exist on sailors of any nationality or racial group making port-of-call visits. However, any Coast Guard command can restrict the movements of any individual crewman or ship through "a wide range of security measures."
But it seems that little remains unchecked or left to chance both with major ships and patrols across the Bay.
"There are obvious threats to refineries and bridges,'' said Chief Boatswain Mate Paul Andrieu, commander of the smaller Coast Guard Station San Francisco, as his unnamed 41-foot patrol boat zipped north across the Bay at 20 knots. "We've increased patrols to combat the threat."
He identified San Francisco International Airport with its runways jutting into the Bay as another area of concern.
In the shadows of the Richmond-San Rafael bridge, Andrieu's patrol encountered a small boat moving slowly, towing sensors across the bottom. Its crew explained that Caltrans contracted with their company to map sunken boats around the bridge.
Three Coast Guard crew members, 9 mm guns conspicuous in holsters on their hips, checked the boat's credentials. Eventually satisfied, they turned their boat south and hugged the lush Marin County coast
The dry air smelled salty and clean. The crew members said they welcomed a rare morning without fog and clouds. They wore baseball caps and orange vests over blue fatigues and said orders called for them to spend the entire day on patrol.
Seven short bursts on a siren signaled a small fishing boat to stop. The crew checked its registration and life preservers, the fishermen objecting not at all. "People since that Tuesday have been more than helpful, like they're watching out for us," Andrieu said.
The boat sped south again. Three tugboats pulled a long black-hulled tanker toward Port Richmond's refineries. Water birds scattered ahead of the patrol boat. Andrieu commented about how empty the Bay seemed, how few boats were about.
The crew returned to its base on Yerba Buena Island. Andrieu barely had time to jump on the dock when he looked offshore and spotted a small boat rather close to a support of the Bay Bridge's eastern span.
"Go. Go. Go," he said to the crew, and the patrol backed quickly away and sped off.
It turned out the boat near the bridge posed no threat. These days, who could tell?
Reach Thomas Peele at 925-977-8463 or tpeele@cctimes.com.
Article received on Saturday, September 29 2001 at 09:08 EDT
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PS-I've witnessed the patrol boats complete with newly mounted machine guns in contrasting navy gray to the coastie white. |
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