Tennessee Roads Being Watched

Three cheers for Tennessee - they understand the situation!!
- G

THP, DHS Conduct Anti-Terror Searches on Interstate

Knoxville (WVLT) - The Tennessee Highway Patrol says more trucks travel on Tennessee interstates than any other state in the southeast and only five more states in the nation. Troopers are working everyday to make sure your roadways are safe. Volunteer TV's Gary Loe finds out they're not just looking for tired drivers and faulty brakes anymore. Dirty bombs, nuclear weapons, those are real concerns for police right here on our interstates. And today authorities staged a surprise checkpoint to make sure no one is transporting anything like that through East Tennessee.

"We're looking for anything out of the ordinary," says Sgt. John Harmon, from the THP. From police dogs, to high-tech government sensors, to comprehensive searches...this wasn't your ordinary, everyday truck stop. Sure, police were checking drivers, their log books and their truck's brakes along I-40 near watt road, but if your big rig contained a hazardous materials placard, authorities were taking a closer look. Opening up every overseas container, hazardous materials load and box truck headed into Knoxville. Their goal, to deter terror attacks. "We're breaking the seal and physically looking into that container, straight truck, or rental truck, to see what it's hauling, to see if it has anything coming from overseas that doesn't show up on the shipping papers," says Sgt. Harmon.

Since 9/11 security in the air has gotten tighter, and so has security on the roadways, where millions more Americans travel each week and where the THP says only about 5 percent of overseas containers are being checked. "If the person out here traveling has evil intent, what better way to transport it than by tractor trailer or container," says Dwayne Collins from the Tennessee Department of Homeland Security. Folks from Oak Ridge National Labs were there as well, maintaining the sensors that search for radioactive materials, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

Police were also watching nearby exits making sure no truckers tried to skip the checkpoint. And if they did, they were in hot pursuit.

After about eight hours of searching, some good news, troopers say no threats to our security were found today. But THP can't see every trucker, they need your help to keep an eye on the roads too. Find out how you can do that in your community by logging onto http://state.tn.us/homelandsecurity/. And if you think you've seen something suspicious, there's also information there that can tell you how to report it. The more eyes the better and the safer our roadways will be.

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