Hotels have some built-in design problems for those seeking to protect them from terrorists. Long hallways can turn into dangerous mazes during the type of attacks that occurred in Mumbai. And the Oberoi and the old wing of the Taj hotel, where most of the fighting took place, both have high, central atriums, like many hotels. This proved to be a vulnerability.
After throwing grenades and directing automatic weapons fire at staff and diners in ground-floor lobbies and restaurants, the attackers at each hotel ascended the atriums. This allowed them to hunt down guests while dropping grenades and shooting at commandos below.
The Oberoi Group employs many plainclothes security officers in its hotels, but they are unarmed, Oberoi said.
J.K. Dutt, the director general of India’s National Security Guard, the commando force that took the lead in the fighting, said in a televised news conference on Sunday that the hardest terrorist to capture in the Taj hotel was one who ascended a spiral staircase and took up a position behind an extremely thick pillar that was part of the 105-year-old building’s original structure.
Particularly at the Taj, the attackers seemed to have a detailed knowledge of the building’s layout, Dutt said. They kept moving among large halls with multiple entrances, not allowing themselves to be cornered in small rooms with no other exit. By contrast, the commandos and police had old blueprints of the massive, labyrinthine hotel that did not clearly show which passageways were connected and which were blocked by walls, and did not show recent construction, Dutt said.
The police and first-response agencies should be working with the hotel industry to devise crisis action plans that would include computer programs detailing all internal and external aspects of hotel building structures, said Michael Coldrick, a London-based security professional and a former explosives specialist with Scotland Yard. For example, a prerecorded DVD walk-through of a hotel could be used to brief special forces assault teams to make sure they know what to expect.
Hotels may also ask staff to keep a closer eye on customers. At some point, Coldrick said, “We might see cleaning ladies with explosives detectors.”
In the end, several security experts say, no security system is foolproof.
The Marriott in Islamabad, which had been struck in the past, had layers of security in place on the night the truck bomber approached. The truck was stopped by security guards at a gate who checked vehicles before allowing them through a hydraulic barrier.
Those precautions are credited with saving lives; the truck never made it past the barrier and closer to the hotel where the blast would have been more devastating. Still, more than 50 people died and more than 250 were wounded.
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