By Desmond Butler, The Associated Press
New York (AP) -- In his 13 years in the Army, Frank Zapata learned to spot suspicious characters.
“They trained me to look a person up and down. I was told to look and pay attention,” he said.
Today, Zapata is a superintendent at a 16-story apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side -- and an unlikely sentry on the nation’s terrorism watch.
Last week, the former drill sergeant was polishing his old skills along with 16 other superintendents taking anti-terrorism training. The citywide effort addresses concerns that residential buildings may be in the sights of terrorists.
Zapata watched attentively for four hours as Michael Lollo, an off-duty police academy instructor, explained how to differentiate between signs of chemical and biological terrorist attacks. He reviewed when to respond and how to coordinate with police and government agencies.
“You don’t want people winging it if something happens,” said Zapata.
The training was initiated by building owners and the union that represents New York’s “supers,” doormen and others. Plans call for the training of 28,000 workers in the next 18 months -- a goal police hope will increase the city’s vigilance for signs of terrorist activity.
“My mother in Queens knows everything that goes on in her neighborhood in Queens. It’s like she has four eyes,” said Lollo, who is among a dozen police instructors teaching the course. “We want 56,000 more eyes.”
While the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks all too vividly illustrated the vulnerabilities of office high-rises and government buildings, public safety analysts have more recently raised concerns about large residential buildings.
The Department of Homeland Security has disseminated intelligence information about terrorist threats to the Real Estate Roundtable, an industry group, which publishes daily briefings on its Web site. The memos have occasionally highlighted threats to residential buildings, according to one New York manager.
And on June 1, the Justice Department said publicly that Jose Padilla, a suspected American al-Qaida operative in U.S. custody since May 2002, had plotted with top lieutenants of Osama bin Laden to blow up residential high-rises. Padilla, according to the government, planned to rent multiple apartments, turn on gas stoves and cause simultaneous explosions in numerous buildings sparked by timed detonators.
Since then, security analysts have cast doubt that Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, would have cleared the necessary background checks to rent multiple apartments. They also said that the smell of leaking gas likely would have given the plot away, and that resulting explosions and fires would not bring down sturdy buildings.
Still, the Padilla revelations offer a sobering glimpse at al-Qaida strategies, according to Matthew Levitt, a former FBI anti-terrorism analyst and now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy.
“They may be moving from high visibility targets like the Pentagon,” Levitt said. “Twenty simultaneous attacks on apartment buildings would still be a big deal.”
In response, some building managers have hired high-paid security consultants to look at safety.
Anti-terrorism experts at Kroll Inc., a risk consultant company, have been evaluating building security and offering private training for employees and residents.
According to Kroll’s analysts, the gas lines supposedly targeted by Padilla are not the only potential vulnerabilities.
Street-level air intakes for heating and air-conditioning systems leave many older buildings vulnerable to chemical attacks, said William Vorlicek, a Kroll analyst and retired U.S. Army Colonel with a background in terrorism and disaster response. Kroll is also looking at water supplies, elevator security and parking lots. “The biggest threat is still vehicle bombs,” he said.
Kroll says it has dozens of residential building companies as clients, not only in New York but also in Chicago, Boston, and other cities.
But experts say New York building owners are on the highest state of alert.
“If someone wants to attack America, this is the target. So we want to be as professional and as calm and prepared as possible,” said Richard Grant director of Midboro Management, which is hosting some of the employee training courses.
City officials are also on alert. “We’re taking any threat seriously,” said New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne. “We want to cast a broader security net around the city, and that includes educating people who can be our eyes and ears, like doormen.”