Five years before a man in a pickup mowed down dozens of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, a confidential security report warned that the iconic Bourbon Street tourist strip was vulnerable to a “vehicular ramming” attack.
The assessment, prepared by a security firm in November 2019 for the group that manages the city’s French Quarter, warned that the bollards designed to block vehicles from entering Bourbon Street did “not appear to work.” The New York security firm recommended fixing the barriers immediately, and said that “the two modes of terror attack likely to be used are vehicular ramming and active shooting.”
The attack early Wednesday, which killed 14 people and injured dozens more, has now forced officials in New Orleans to confront whether they did enough to protect one of the country’s most famed tourist spots against an attack foreseen years earlier.
Police officials stressed that the city had started work to replace the old barriers in November, ahead of the Super Bowl next month, and that the work was still ongoing on Wednesday when the attack occurred.
They also said that they had no way of anticipating that the attacker would jump up onto the Bourbon Street sidewalk, evading the police cruiser that was parked there as a security measure.
“It wasn’t something that we expected to account for,” said Capt. LeJon Roberts, commander of the French Quarter police district, at the news conference after the attack.
But some security experts said New Orleans had left Bourbon Street dangerously vulnerable. And they pointed to other cities, including New York and Chicago, that had used other strategies to try to ensure safety.
“This should be no surprise to anyone who’s ever been tasked with protecting an area dense with pedestrian traffic,” said Don Aviv, chief executive of the security firm Interfor International, which performed the 2019 security assessment. “The French Quarter is the perfect target.”
New Orleans first installed its metal security barriers along Bourbon Street in 2017, after scores of people were killed in a terrorist truck attack on a Bastille Day parade in Nice, France, a year earlier.
But those bollards, which are designed to block vehicles from crashing into buildings and pedestrians, were quickly jammed with Mardi Gras beads and stopped working, said Rafael Goyeneche, head of the city’s independent Metropolitan Crime Commission, a watchdog and advisory group.
“Rather than fix them, they just ignore it,” he said in an interview.
After Interfor wrote its assessment in 2019, the French Quarter Management District, which oversees the area, published a summary in August 2020.
The public version focuses on long-running complaints about rowdiness and crime in the French Quarter, and makes just one reference to the threat of terrorism. The concerns about a vehicular ramming attack and malfunctioning bollards were in a confidential portion of the report that was not released publicly.
The French Quarter did take steps to improve security in response to Interfor’s report, including a greater police presence, said Christian Pendleton, the former chair of the French Quarter Management District.
Mr. Pendleton said the city was in the process of installing a new bollard system, but even if that work had been completed in time it might not have been enough to prevent Wednesday’s attack.
“Evil people do evil things,” Mr. Pendleton said.
By Thursday afternoon, Bourbon Street had reopened with a visible, though not heavy, police presence. Knots of police officers, state and local, stood at intersections on the side streets leading to Bourbon Street, manning police cars and portable metal police barricades blocking vehicle access.
Pedestrians strolled in bright sunshine past the bars where the attacker struck, and an impromptu brass band struck up a tune.
“I’m very surprised there’s this amount of people out here,” said Mary Pond, a bartender at Mango Mango Daiquiris. “It’s like nothing even happened.”
But on the central artery leading to the Superdome, where the Sugar Bowl was being played on Thursday afternoon, police cars lined the street, blocking cars.
Security experts acknowledged that it was impossible to protect every sidewalk and street party in America against a determined vehicle attack. And in recent years, scores of pedestrians have been killed at Christmas markets in Germany, a bike path in Manhattan, a sports center in China and others. The Islamic State, which inspired the New Orleans attacker, has called for vehicle attacks against civilians.
In response, cities have deployed dump trucks and fire engines to protect parades, protests and other high-profile public gatherings, or set out concrete jersey barriers or temporary plastic barriers filled with water.
In Chicago, salt trucks are strategically placed to block vehicles. Both decorative and steel bollards have been installed in pedestrian zones. On the city’s famed Magnificent Mile, large concrete flowerpots, overflowing with tulips and other blooms, are used as security measures against cars, a practice known as crime prevention through environmental design.
“We want it to be aesthetically pleasing,” Daniel O’Shea, a former high-ranking official for the Chicago Police Department, said on Thursday. “We try and recommend measures that you wouldn’t think are security measures but actually are — and perform the beautification of Michigan Avenue as well.”
In New York, the police use concrete blocks and police vehicles to keep cars from the streets during special events like the Thanksgiving Day Parade and New Year’s Eve, said Kenneth Corey, a former chief of department.
Sand trucks are placed on larger thoroughfares like 42nd and 57th Streets and on the avenues during New Year’s Eve, he said. And anyone coming into that area goes through a metal detector, Mr. Corey said.
The police also use radiation detection equipment and canines who can sniff explosives, along with thousands of officers, he said. Along Times Square, there are now permanent bollards since Bill DeBlasio announced in 2018, when he was mayor, that the city would spend $50 million to build 1,500 bollards.
New York police constantly evolve their security plans after attacks in other cities, Mr. Corey said.
But “it is very difficult to guard against a ‘lone wolf’ style of attack,” he said.
Washington, too, has tried to take action. The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law created a $25 million fund for cities to install bollards to protect against accidental crashes and terrorism threats. But Congress has failed to actually provide the money, said Jake Parker, senior director for government relations at the Security Industry Association.
The city of Waukesha, Wis., purchased bollards after a vehicular attack on a Christmas parade in 2021 that killed six people and injured dozens. But they are expensive to buy and maintain, said the mayor, Shawn N. Reilly.
Since the attack in Waukesha, officials have shortened the parade to minimize the number of driveways that touch the route. The city no longer holds the parade on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, a week when many police officers, firefighters and other city employees have headed north for deer hunting, causing a work force shortage.
Crowds still come out for parades and other events, including a summer outdoor gathering called Friday Night Live, where barricades designed to stop cars have given the public some comfort.
”I still think that people want to be part of their community, go to parades, go to events, have a good time,” Mr. Reilly said. “We’re going to be in a really bad place if the end result is that we have no gatherings of lots of people.”
But the New Orleans attack has rattled mayors and public safety officials around the country, and may force them to reconsider whether their safety plans could stop a determined attacker armed with a truck.
“Every community,” Mayor Reilly said, “is going to be re-examining what they do now.”
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