As Adita Mat Husin went to her 10th-floor office in the world’s tallest buildings on Wednesday, she was thinking of work – not about how safe the Petronas Twin Towers would be on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks in the United States.
”Everyone here was a bit nervous just after the tragedy” on September 11 last year, said the 25-year-old engineer, as she approached a metal detector and an X-ray scanner that were set up at the ground floor tower entrances soon after the attacks. ”But now, it’s business as usual. We feel pretty secure.”
Office workers, tourists and children on field trips thronged the landmark like every other day, and also said they weren’t worried about their safety.
Even so, police and security officers were on heightened alert for the anniversary at the 88-storey, 452-metre buildings.
In the past year, the only major security scare at the nickel-plated colossus occurred 12 hours after the attacks in New York and Washington DC. At that time, thousands of people were evacuated from the Petronas Towers because of a bomb hoax ? the only one since the buildings opened in 1996.
Dell Akbar Khan, the acting police chief of Kuala Lumpur, said there had been no report of any potential September 11 security threat to the towers this year, but authorities have nevertheless stepped up surveillance.
”We are being extra vigilant … (but) the people have no reason to fear,” Dell told The Associated Press.
A Petronas building representative, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were fewer people at work in the towers throughout this week because of school vacations, which perennially cause many parents to take leave and travel with their children.
”It has nothing to do with any September 11 jitters,” she said.
The public queued up as usual to visit the 41st-floor skybridge that connects the towers and offers panoramic views of Malaysia’s largest city. It is the only part of the buildings that is not restricted to Petronas staff and tenants, mostly corporate offices.
”If a plane hits the towers, there is nothing we can do,” said Ghassan Nasry (32) a tourist from Saudi Arabia. ”But … I think Malaysia is a much safer place than America.”
A five-minute walk from the Petronas towers, heightened security was apparent at the US Embassy, which was closed indefinitely following a threat officials called ”credible and specific.”
More than a dozen Malaysian paramilitary police patrolled the perimeter and closed part of the street in front of the embassy to traffic. – Sapa-AP