Today has been very interesting, as I have taken several phone calls from security contacts wanting to learn more about Anhydrous Ammonia (NH3) and terrorist attacks, such as suicide car bombs or small missile attacks on pressure vessels holding NH3. I am not aware of any security alerts issued by US authorities as of this afternoon, but I do know there is some minor curiosity by some in our government after Hezbollah’s secretary-general openly threatened to strike ammonia storage facilities in Haifa, Israel with missiles, calling the attack “his nuclear weapon”. We all knew this was a potential, as we have seen terrorist cells in Iraq use Chlorine as a weapon in the last several years. But this is a first for NH3 and although I am sure the US Government has done testing, I don’t think a lot of people know the results of their testing. How real is this threat to the citizens of Haifa, Israel?
Serious enough that last year Israel’s Environmental Protection Minister may have played his cards too soon when he announced plans to build ammonia storage facilities in the Negev desert that would ultimately lead to the closure of the Haifa plants, that are currently within range of Hezbollah’s missiles. So we can get a glimpse into the mind of a terrorist organization that realizes a smartly placed explosive device can escalate an incident in magnitudes by using highly hazard chemicals found in industries. As I said, this is not a new revelation, but it should act as a WAKE UP call that our Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) are necessary! Yes, the probability may be LOW, but if they are successful the severity could be beyond any notion of what we would call “catastrophic”. We may not be dealing with Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations equipped with thousands of rockets that can reach our storage vessels, but thinking about your contractor screening AND controlling your contractors so anyone with ill intent who does breach our perimeter(s) will not have easy access to our bulk storage vessels with their vehicles or another equipment is something we should be controlling from a mere process safety facility siting perspective.
None the less, Hezbollah just took NH3 up a notch on the “watch list” by their open plans to use it as a weapon on the citizens of Haifa.