June 29, 2005 | Getting Heavy on the Lighters

The Transportation Security Administration employee who complained about the DDOLA in Hawaii (that's Distributed Denial of Lighter Attack for those of you not paying attention) is now claiming the TSA hates him and is punishing him for blowing the whistle on the somewhosguy's bomb plot.

Robert Cravens fears that he will be fired by the Transportation Security Administration for bringing to light safety problems at the airport, so he decided to talk to KITV 4 News.

Cravens, 52, was a property clerk who inventoried thousands of banned items seized or surrendered at Honolulu International Airport. He said TSA had no plan to store hundreds of pounds of cigarette lighters seized since April -- along with other flammables, like matches, fireworks, paint and paint thinner.

So huge quantities of the stuff were being kept just steps away from the TSA operations center and an employee break room.

"It's just elementary hazmat 101 -- that you could possibly have an explosion," Cravens said. Starting June 1, he said he complained verbally and in writing about the situation. He lodged 12 complaints.

"I was complaining, complaining, complaining and they took no action," Cravens said. So he went outside the TSA to the U.S. Labor Department, the State Health Department and others. They inspected the site, found unsafe conditions and recommended changes that TSA made in the last week.

Cravens said in the middle of last month, after he'd been complaining for two weeks, managers transferred him to another job and cut his hours drastically.

TSA says it moved Cravens out from the property room because he and a female employee had filed dueling harassment complaints.

Link

And since we are here, can we have a moment of sympathy for an agency that, leading up to Independence Day, actually needs to announce to the public that it is illegal to bring fireworks on airplanes. Not that anyone would be able to light bottle rockets off in the cabin, but still, I don't know anyone who wants to fly next to the guy with Roman Candles in his carry-on.

Posted by Ryan Singel at June 29, 2005 05:33 PM

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