Las Vegas ranks ninth on list of likely targets for terrorists

Las Vegas ranks ninth among American cities most likely to suffer a major terrorist strike, according to a newly released report by a government-funded think tank.

"Las Vegas stands out in having a high proportion of high-likelihood targets compared to the nation as a whole," the Rand Corporation report said. "This unusual distribution increases the overall attack probability in Las Vegas."

A slew of potential targets on the Strip combined with the projected financial and property losses arising from an attack on a hotel elevate Las Vegas to a high spot on the list, said Henry Willis, the report's main author.

The Rand Corp. used Las Vegas as a case study in the report, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

"I don't know all the reasons we were asked to use Las Vegas," Willis said. "I just know we were asked."

The study, which took about two years to complete, is intended in part to help the federal government develop a better method for allocating terrorism-related funds to urban areas.

Last year, Homeland Security officials threatened to drop the Las Vegas area from a list of 35 locales considered most at risk of a terrorist attack. But the agency restored Las Vegas to that list earlier this year.

"The report validates our argument that we belong in that top tier of cities," said Las Vegas police Lt. Tom Monahan.

Five cities, according to the Rand report, face a substantially greater risk of terrorism than Las Vegas: New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

At ninth, Las Vegas is bunched together with Boston, Houston, Philadelphia, and Miami.

Much of the data in the report comes from Risk Management Solutions, a global risk-modeling company that quantifies the risk and cost of natural and man-made disasters for the insurance industry.

The report confirms findings published last year in the Review-Journal series, "The Long Shadow of 9/11." Relying on similar data, the newspaper found that the local economy would be devastated by a major terrorist strike.

The terrorism scenarios examined by the newspaper included:

• A 2-ton truck bomb -- smaller than the fertilizer bomb used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing -- could cause about $2.8 billion in losses. A 10-ton bomb, which would be so large it would have to be hauled on a tractor-trailer, could inflict about $3.7 billion in damage.

• A commercial airliner crashing into a high-rise would cost about $4.2 billion.

• A 5-kiloton nuclear bomb would do about $50 billion worth of damage, more than five times what Clark County's gross gaming revenue totaled in 2005.

Assistant Sheriff Mike McClary said Las Vegas' ranking should be viewed with caution.

"Absent specific intelligence about a planned attack, it's difficult to put an objective number on something that's by nature very subjective," he said.

The full Rand Corp. report can be found on the group's website at www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR386/.

Contact reporter Alan Maimon at amaimon@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0404.