From: *Travis*
Date: Sun, Sep 21, 2008
Subject: Fire as a Tool of Terror
Fire as a Tool of
Terror<http://counterterrorismblog.org/2008/09/fire_as_a_tool_of_terror.php>
Today, September 19, 2008, 7 hours ago | Aaron Mannes[image: Go to full
article]<http://counterterrorismblog.org/2008/09/fire_as_a_tool_of_terror.php>
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2008/09/fire_as_a_tool_of_terror.php
Co-blogger Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Kyle Dabruzzi recently co-authored an
interesting
report<http://counterterrorismblog.org/2008/09/firefighters_developing_role_i.php>on
how firefighters can play an enhanced counter-terror role. His report
reminded me of some preliminary research I had done on terrorist use of fire
in the wake of the 2007 forest fires in Greece that killed 63 people and did
hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage. Putting these two items
together suggests another possible counter-terror role for fire-fighters.
*Fire Next Time?*
Fire is certainly capable of causing substantial damage either to specific
targets and, if the conditions are right, as a virtual WMD. Several of the
worst disasters in U.S. history were fires, including the Great Chicago Fire
in 1871 and the fires triggered by the San Francisco earthquake in 1906
destroyed entire cities. As recently as 1991 a firestorm in Oakland killed
25, did $1.5 billion in damage, and decimated 1520 acres within a major
American city. Additionally, fire has the potential to trigger a cascading
disaster. A fire might also lead to utility outages or reach new dimensions
of scale if it reaches a sensitive site.
Fire has some advantages as a tool for terrorists. First, it is a basic
mantra among TV newspeople, "The camera loves fire." As a means of garnering
media attention, fire has tremendous potential. (Consider the endless
footage of the fire at the Glasgow airport from the summer 2007 terror
plot<http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/06/uk_scotland_terror_strike_at_g.php>
.)
Fire is also technically easy. Although it is conventional wisdom that
bomb-making techniques can be gleaned off of the Internet - the actual
record of self-starting cells as bomb-makers is not very good. The
successful plots have had links to real world training.
Interestingly, in light of its apparent ease of use, based on these graphs
from the Global Terrorism Database <http://www.start.umd.edu/data/gtd/> at
the University of Maryland's Study of Terrorism and Responses to
Terrorism<http://www.start.umd.edu/>(with which I have no
affiliation), fire does not appear to be the terror
weapon of choice.
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