Shipping Container Marked "Bomb" Disrupts L.A. Imports and Exports
If you worked at a port and discovered a shipping container marked “bomb”, what would you do?
A Mary Slosson story on Yahoo! News reported just such an incident at the Port of Los Angeles.
Longshoremen discovered a shipping container with the word “bomb” spray-painted on it in a couple of places. As a precaution, the ship that the container arrived on was evacuated and the Los Angeles Police Department came in with dogs and a bomb squad.
According to the article, approximately 10 percent of the port was closed. No bomb or suspicious material was found.
A little spray paint caused a big disruption to the traffic at the port. Was it an overreaction?
The story had several comments, most of them negative, criticizing the port, longshoremen, and the United States in general.
True, it seems unlikely that someone planting a bomb would mark “bomb” on its container. However, should such a threatening mark be ignored?
When someone calls a school and says there is a bomb in the building, should the students be left inside, assuming the call is a prank?
I’ve been evacuated in a number of such bomb threats. Never was there a bomb.
Still, we evacuate such a school because the lives of people are more important than avoiding unnecessary disruption.
Are the lives of the people who work in international shipping at our country’s ports any less important than the lives of students and faculty in a school? Or is importing and exporting so important that avoiding its disruption is more important than considering people’s lives?
I, for one, trust the judgment of the people working with shipping containers day in and day out at our ports to decide what is suspicious enough to disrupt international shipping operations over random Yahoo! commenters. And it is their safety at risk, after all.
If you disagree, please share your opinion below.