In Salt Lake: Swifter, Higher, Stronger, Safer?

SALT LAKE CITY — Framed against the snow-draped peaks of the Wasatch Range, downtown buildings have been draped in huge blue-tinted wraps. There’s a skater on the Mormon church’s central office building. A skier on a bank building. A biathlon racer on the concert hall.

There are also 8-foot-high chain-link fences around the press center, the medals plaza, the athletes’ village. Night and day, soldiers in camouflage gear stand watch, helmets on, rifles slung over their shoulders. Up above, there is the unmistakable sound of Black Hawk military helicopters patrolling Salt Lake City, site of the Winter Olympic Games.

“We are so ready,” Caroline Shaw, spokeswoman for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, said as she surveyed pizza boxes, soda cans and water bottles in the committee’s offices--another of last week’s late-night meals.

“We are ready to have the baby.”

The XIX Winter Olympic Games begin Friday amid terrorism fears and tight security. President Bush is expected to attend the nighttime opening ceremony, which will be televised around the world.

“Security efforts are unprecedented,” said International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge, in his newly opened office here.

These Games, together with today’s Super Bowl, mark the debut of a new era in American security, a test of the nation’s ability to protect itself--and athletes and spectators from around the world--after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“People need to know that our government officials are doing absolutely everything possible,” Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson said. “That does not mean there are no risks. That doesn’t mean there are any absolute guarantees. Our success in pulling this off is going to speak very loudly to the commitment of the government in this country to providing for the safety and security of our citizens.”

They are the first Winter Olympics in the United States in 22 years--since the Lake Placid Games in New York in 1980--and will be the last Olympics in this nation for at least 10 years. The Olympic Village expects to check in about 2,500 athletes from 77 nations this week--as well as Rogge, in his first Games as IOC president, who has said he intends to bunk there.

“I expect very good Games,” Rogge said.

He and other officials are pleased with the city’s preparedness. “The computers are ready. The trailers are ready. The bleachers are in. The fields of play are superb,” said Mitt Romney, president of the organizing committee.

Ticketing, transport, the prospect of athletes testing positive for drugs and, as always in the Winter Olympics, the weather remain concerns. But the overriding issue--for athletes, officials and fans--has been security.

For the IOC, security has been “priority No. 1,” Rogge said, ever since the kidnapping and murders of 11 Israelis at the 1972 Munich Summer Games in Germany. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, a thorough review of the Games’ security plan was undertaken, and the U.S. government increased funding by $55 million.

Security costs for the Salt Lake Games now total $310 million, a record for a U.S. Olympics, with the federal government underwriting $240 million.

For comparison, after accounting for inflation, the U.S. government paid $101 million to help fund security for the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta--which attracted about 10,000 athletes, four times the number in Salt Lake City.

The Secret Service has led the security planning for Salt Lake. The FBI is in charge should an incident unfold.

The Federal Aviation Administration will bar air traffic over Salt Lake City during the opening and closing ceremonies, and shut down the international airport for several hours. General aviation is being restricted, with portable control towers being set up this weekend in Salt Lake and Provo to handle the extra small-plane traffic.

Lessons Learned From Atlanta Bombing

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dispatched bioterrorism experts and stockpiled vaccines and antibiotics.

Security planners in Salt Lake have sought to draw on lessons from the 1996 Games, which were marred by a bomb that exploded in Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta, killing one person and wounding more than 100.

Centennial Olympic Park was an open space without fences. In Salt Lake, the medals plaza downtown--where gold, silver and bronze will be awarded nightly and big-name musical acts are due to play--is encircled by fencing. Fans will have to pass through airport-style metal detectors to get in.

Asked about security risks, Romney said late last week, “I don’t think it’s clear if there’s a more likely place or another.

“We will make mistakes. We will be judged by whether we respond to those mistakes and whether we are fair in our response.”

In all, 10,000 law enforcement officers and military personnel have been drafted to patrol the various venues--2,100 Utah police officers, 400 law enforcement volunteers from other states, 1,600 officers under Secret Service authority, 1,400 FBI agents or staffers, 1,000 federal officers from various agencies and 3,500 from the military.

An additional 5,000 people will be on-site as event services officials whose duties can include security. In addition, there are about 1,500 private security guards assigned to warehouses, hotels and other sensitive sites.

Even with all those numbers, there remain potential vulnerabilities. Organizers asked last week for up to 60 more officers to patrol a pedestrian mall in Park City, the upscale mountain resort where crowds are expected to gather nightly to take in the Games on two big-screen TVs.

The narrow thoroughfare of galleries, restaurants and tourist shops on old Main Street will be blocked to vehicles during the day, forcing businesses to stock up between midnight and dawn. But there will be no tight security fencing in most of downtown.

“All along, everyone has said there’s always a certain price you pay for the freedom of people’s ability to move around freely,” said Bill Malone, director of the Park City Chamber of Commerce. “It’s in the middle of town. You can’t just fence people’s homes off.”

Business owners, who have seen an alarming slump in the windup to the Olympics (hotel bookings are down 25% but will pick up when the Games begin), have been largely cooperative.

“It will be difficult for us to move [around],” acknowledged Alberto Martinez, owner of La Casita restaurant on Main Street. “But what do we want to do? Be comfy or successful?”

In downtown Salt Lake City, most large businesses have adopted flex-time hours to keep business traffic away from the festivals, medal ceremonies and concerts that are expected to flood many downtown streets with pedestrians by 3 p.m. each day.

At Inkjetart.com, which supplies artists and photographers all over the U.S. from a building half a block from the Olympic Medals Plaza, employees will work from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. But where they will park remains a problem: The lot owner doubled the rates for February and leased much of the space for hospitality tents.

Royce Bair, Inkjetart’s owner, says the level of security already in place could result in hours of delays once the Games are underway.

“Somehow things are going to have to be streamlined,” he said. “Let me give you an example. Up in the Olympic Village where they have the dormitories for the athletes, I talked to a gentleman yesterday who works in maintenance, and he said one of the dormitory people needed an extension cord. The maintenance people went to take it over, and where it would normally take that guy in a pickup truck 15 minutes to deliver it, it took him 2 1/2 hours. Not because of the traffic but because of the security.

“Now, during the first few days, I don’t think people are going to be quite used to this. I think there’s going to be some people who might miss their venues,” Bair said. “I mean, we have to do this. But isn’t it terrible? The terrorists wanted to change our lifestyle, disrupt our lives, and they have. It’s going to take some of the fun out of the Games.”

For Ticket-Holders, Delay Will be Constant

Olympic officials have not minced words: Delay will be the order of the day. Ticket-holders are advised to leave four hours early for skiing events in Park City, normally a 35-minute drive from Salt Lake. Interstate 80, which links the two at full capacity with 5,200 cars an hour, will be handling 6,500.

The Utah Department of Transportation has channeled nearly $89 million in federal funds for road improvements and designed an elaborate network of park-and-ride lots and shuttle buses that are intended to provide almost exclusive access to venues. Still, department spokeswoman Amanda Covington admits, the system doesn’t work unless every car in the park-and-ride lot arrives with three people in it and unless at least 20% of normal traffic is lured off the roads.

The nightmare scenario: a big snowstorm like the one that hit Monday. It dumped 12 inches of snow in four hours on Park City and closed a main road for several hours--the biggest storm in 25 years. National Weather Service forecasters said they expect a strong storm to move through northern Utah beginning Friday--opening day.

“There’s no way you can plan for that,” said Myles Rademan, Park City’s public affairs director. “If it happens, you have to be like Zorba the Greek. You throw up your hands and you laugh.”

The good side was that last week’s storm dumped more than a foot of powder in the mountains--and security teams say the weather could help. They want a sustained blast of Arctic air, the better to chill any potential disruption.

“The colder it is, the better it is for us,” said a source on the security team who asked not to be identified.

The coordinated security effort has drawn praise in recent weeks from Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and Homeland Security Director Thomas J. Ridge, each of whom has toured the area.

The reality, however, the security team source said, is that there have been inevitable behind-the-scenes culture clashes and turf battles among federal, state and local officials--in deciding, for instance, how to best beef up security in Park City.

“The tough thing about this is putting these people on the ground and making them work together as a unified force,” the source said.

Security officials also worry that protests might get out of hand and drain resources.

Even a peaceful protest is a “significant distraction to law enforcement forces” the security team source said.

Protest sites have been established, and Mayor Anderson, a former attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, has been adamant in insisting that free-speech rights will be ensured.

Violent Protests Won’t Be Tolerated

The city will be passing out cards to demonstrators with quotes from Mahatma Gandhi, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez, reminding them not only of the importance of the 1st Amendment but also of the “nonviolent” part of civil disobedience.

Already, activists on behalf of the homeless and animal rights supporters opposed to the Olympic rodeo have signaled their intent to demonstrate.

“When people cross the line and they intend to disrupt and act out violently, we are prepared to interrupt that immediately,” Anderson said. “I don’t think we’re any less civil libertarians if we provide for the safety and security of people who are here.”