"Disabled travelers get help at airport"

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Disabled travelers get help at airport 
By Bill Harless
The Nashville (TN) City Paper


In January, airport security screeners began testing amputees'
prosthetic devices for explosives more aggressively than they had in the
past, using a procedure called Explosive Trace Detection Sampling.

Federal officials worried that terrorists might make use of prosthetic
devices, according to Sandra Cammaroto, program manager for the
Screening of Persons with Disabilities Program at the federal
Transportation Security Administration.

But then, "things really started getting difficult" for flyers with
prosthetic devices, said Paddy Rossbach, president and CEO of the
Amputee Coalition of America (ACA), which held its annual conference
last week in Nashville.

Scanners, having to swipe the prostheses, were swiping near the socket,
where a prosthesis attaches to the body, Rossbach said. But sometimes
the sockets are in private areas of the body.

"In order to get to that, people have to get undressed.Not only that,
some of them [the screeners] were taking it even further, and instead of
just taking a swipe around the socket, they were really invading
people's more personal areas - that's unnecessary."

Rossbach tells the story of an amputee who'd lost all four of her limbs
because of a disease and was forced to remove them all in public at an
airport.

The procedure has been revised, however, so that amputees no longer have
to take clothing off and so that they can be tested in private if they
request, Cammaroto said.

The swiping now only needs to be done on an "accessible" area of the
prosthesis, reachable through just lifting a sleeve, pant leg or skirt
partially.

The new procedure went into effect in June, and the screeners at the
Nashville International Airport are "stellar" - the "best" and
"most-trained" in the country, Cammaroto said.

Rossbach said members of the ACA wrote the government with their
complaints and that she then began meeting with Cammaroto.

"[I] said, you know, this really is unacceptable - we've got to find
some different way of doing it - and then they worked very, very hard to
do that."

Rossbach praises Cammaroto's efforts.

The ACA held a youth-kid camp in Nashville in June, and Cammaroto came
to help train the 250 screeners at the Nashville International Airport
in the revised procedure. 

The campers smoothly made it through the screening, and the result was
"wonderful," Cammaroto said.

Last Sunday, when most of the ACA conference attendees left Nashville,
extra staffers worked and 10 extra private screening rooms were set up
to accommodate the amputees.

The ACA delivers information to new amputees in hospitals, trains
healthcare providers and offers a telephone hotline for people desiring
information.

The ACA Web site is at www.amputee-coalition.org, and its phone number
is 1-888-267-5669.


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