Fire in Chicago ARTCC... Again....

roncachamp said:
That's Chicago approach, Chicago ARTCC is in Aurora.
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Oh. My bad. For some reason, I unreasonably thought that your question was seeking information about the last ATC fire that affected Chicago traffic and caused HighFlyingA380 to be "delayed for hours... again."

I should have realized you specifically meant when was the last fire at the ARTCC facility in Aurora. Thanks for clarifying.
 
[email protected] said:
Oh. My bad. For some reason, I unreasonably thought that your question was seeking information about the last ATC fire that affected Chicago traffic and caused HighFlyingA380 to be "delayed for hours... again."
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It appears that reason is your failure to read the subject line.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Where do you get all that? :dunno:

All I've seen was ONE guy, with NON-gunshot wounds. I figure he must have burned himself with the flamethrower he used to torch the place!
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http://www.aol.com/article/2014/09/...a-fire-closed-midway-ohare-airports/20968138/

"Two injured males were found in the building's basement, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The main suspect had burns and self-inflicted wounds, according to ABC News. The second injured person's wounds are not self-inflicted, said the Sun-Times."

At that point, with that kind of reporting, it sounded like a murder/suicide with an intentional fire somewhere in there. Looks now like that's not the case though.
 
I can't believe they couldn't find two guys to stay behind and work traffic while everyone else evacuated the building. It's been done before at New York TRACON.
 
roncachamp said:
Because non-radar is just as unavailable as radar once the facility has been evacuated.
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OK, thought fire was at the radar site. Is Center there also? Denver Center is not at the radar site. I sure could have misunderstood.

Edit: I re-read the news and it was the Center not the radar. My bad.
 
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Velocity173 said:
I can't believe they couldn't find two guys to stay behind and work traffic while everyone else evacuated the building. It's been done before at New York TRACON.
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There wasn't anything to work. The landlines, frequencies, and radar feeds had all been affected. Luckily, there wasn't much traffic when the controllers lost their frequencies and radar.
 
roncachamp said:
It appears that reason is your failure to read the subject line.
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No. It's actually because I failed to recognize the snarky nature of your question. I mistakenly thought you really didn't know about the May fire.

You already knew about the fire in May. You already knew that it was the TRACON and not the ARTCC.

If you believed it was important that the fires were in different ATC facilities, you should have just said so.
 
MarkZ said:
There wasn't anything to work. The landlines, frequencies, and radar feeds had all been affected. Luckily, there wasn't much traffic when the controllers lost their frequencies and radar.
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He's making a movie reference (Pushing Tin).

--Carlos V.
 
[email protected] said:
No. It's actually because I failed to recognize the snarky nature of your question. I mistakenly thought you really didn't know about the May fire.

You already knew about the fire in May. You already knew that it was the TRACON and not the ARTCC.

If you believed it was important that the fires were in different ATC facilities, you should have just said so.
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In other words, it was your failure to understand the subject line.
 
There are already laws with severe penalties tampering with FAA facilities. So what? Now we need armed guards that will shoot unauthorized persons on sight. The Nevermind will be that this guy was fully authorized.
 
I overheard something on Minneapolis center about local towers running traffic in Chicago, dunno if that's so but some controller said it.

I wasn't able to get flight following all the way to my destination. Meh.
 
Why is it that in a field cluttered with redundancies put in place for safety. Why is it that there are not redundancies in place for radar? Or are that and I'm just not informed
 
LoneAspen said:
Maybe it was Milton from Office Space. Got tired of his cube being moved into the basement.
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I got in trouble on FB earlier today for offending the more empathetic "pray for them" crowd by asking if it was the dude with the red stapler. :)

mikea said:
There are already laws with severe penalties tampering with FAA facilities. So what? Now we need armed guards that will shoot unauthorized persons on sight. The Nevermind will be that this guy was fully authorized.
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This'll fix it. LOL! Every day. For every controller. Maybe it's time. Certainly is okay for passengers, right!?

ddabde98e928db94c5abc7925f700cc3.jpg


Dude slit his wrists. He apparently made a decision about his life. When he continued and put other's lives in danger with the fire, I have absolutely no tolerance for that.

Want to take yourself out? Fine. Try to hurt others? You're just scum no better than any other mass murderer or one who attempts same.

Sorry to hear about the other injuries. Glad he didn't succeed in killing anyone else.
 
Catalo said:
Why is it that in a field cluttered with redundancies put in place for safety. Why is it that there are not redundancies in place for radar? Or are that and I'm just not informed
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No budget. Spent it on ADS-B. LOL!
 
Government ineptitude at its finest. Certainly someone at the FAA has heard of a "business continuity plan," right?

If this happened at my place of employment...oh wait, it has. Guess what? One of our other offices picked up the load without a hitch.

Shameful.

On a side note, can't we use this to illustrate to the airlines that claim GA needs ATC as much if not more than they do is complete bs. Nothing would have stopped VFR flights because some dude lost his **** and tried to kill himself...just saying.
 
SkyHog said:
Government ineptitude at its finest. Certainly someone at the FAA has heard of a "business continuity plan," right?
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Nope, no one in federal service has heard of anything not promulgated by "higher authority"...
 
SkyHog said:
Government ineptitude at its finest. Certainly someone at the FAA has heard of a "business continuity plan," right?

If this happened at my place of employment...oh wait, it has. Guess what? One of our other offices picked up the load without a hitch.

Shameful.

On a side note, can't we use this to illustrate to the airlines that claim GA needs ATC as much if not more than they do is complete bs. Nothing would have stopped VFR flights because some dude lost his **** and tried to kill himself...just saying.
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Amen, brother. Say it again!
 
Blatantly stolen from someone else's Facebook feed, but you gotta love Dispatchers... Right to the point...

f661ff66a36615a5ee8c0f5742d8c0c5.jpg
 
Catalo said:
Why is it that in a field cluttered with redundancies put in place for safety. Why is it that there are not redundancies in place for radar? Or are that and I'm just not informed
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There are, but radar was not the only loss and none of the redundancies are available once the building is evacuated.
 
It's unrealistic to expect air traffic services to continue unabated while the physical building from which those services are provided is on fire. There was a plan in place to keep some traffic moving through the area.

While it would be nice to have complete redundancy for every airspace sector in the country, people would be complaining about how wasteful the FAA is in paying for more equipment and training to be able to accomplish that. A controller from MSP Center who transfers to Chi Center probably has to train for a year to learn local procedures, airspace, etc...to expect someone to simply pull up a video map and frequency from a different facility and start working the airplanes is unrealistic.
 
Jmcmanna said:
It's unrealistic to expect air traffic services to continue unabated while the physical building from which those services are provided is on fire. There was a plan in place to keep some traffic moving through the area.

While it would be nice to have complete redundancy for every airspace sector in the country, people would be complaining about how wasteful the FAA is in paying for more equipment and training to be able to accomplish that. A controller from MSP Center who transfers to Chi Center probably has to train for a year to learn local procedures, airspace, etc...to expect someone to simply pull up a video map and frequency from a different facility and start working the airplanes is unrealistic.
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That's all true, but it's also unrealistic to have contingency plans that exist only on paper.
 
Reading this thread it seems there is only so much that the FAA could have done. It's my understanding this guy had a valid clearance which allowed him to be at the physical building.
 
So....

For all you ATC guys/gals out there....

Suppose I was a small GA plane cruising around the area when this all went down and ORD and Midway was not accepting any IFR flights...

Could I have called up the tower, asked to land or even a few T&G's and been cleared in to play ?

After all.. I would have been the only guy there..:yes:...:D
 
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N801BH said:
So....

For all you ATC guys/gals out there....

Sup[pose I was a small GA plane cruising around the area when this all went down and ORD and Midway was not accepting any IFR flights...

Could I have called up the tower, asked to land or even a few T&G's and been cleared in to play ?

After all.. I would have been the only guy there..:yes:...:D
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Probably yes. Seems likely the ORD and MDW towers along with the Chicago TRACON were sitting around with little to do unless they sent half the normal staff home for the duration. Or maybe they were all busy handling the traffic normally processed by the ARTCC?
 
asgcpa said:
Reading this thread it seems there is only so much that the FAA could have done. It's my understanding this guy had a valid clearance which allowed him to be at the physical building.
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There are things that could be done but they all cost money so the real question is would it make sense financially.

For instance, they could have a policy that no one is allowed in a sensitive area (computer room, demark area, etc) unacompanied. That would have probably prevented this particular mess since it's rather unlikely two disgruntled and mentally ill co-workers would join up on something like this.

Also it's technically fairly simple to provide offsite redundancy for radar and comm. If all centers were networked with two or three adjacent centers so that the neighbors could take over completely in the event that one center became unavailable the loss of capability to handle IFR flights in the area would have been much less. Chances are that NEXTGEN allows for exactly that.
 
Jmcmanna said:
It's unrealistic to expect air traffic services to continue unabated while the physical building from which those services are provided is on fire. There was a plan in place to keep some traffic moving through the area.

While it would be nice to have complete redundancy for every airspace sector in the country, people would be complaining about how wasteful the FAA is in paying for more equipment and training to be able to accomplish that. A controller from MSP Center who transfers to Chi Center probably has to train for a year to learn local procedures, airspace, etc...to expect someone to simply pull up a video map and frequency from a different facility and start working the airplanes is unrealistic.
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That is incredibly short sighted and lacking a strategic vision. The answer is to standardize so that each sector is the same. Then develop a BC plan that spreads load to surrounding sectors who work the load of the closed sector.

Then you have to test it. When it doesn't matter.

Especially in the case of an ARTCC where there's no need to actually see outside to do the job, it could be done just ad reliably from Pune India as it could from Aurora.

Staffing is easy for BC. You already have 24/7 coverage which means you have resources not utilized standing by. For an emergency plan, activate them from remote locations and you already have appropriate staffing levels.
 
SkyHog said:
That is incredibly short sighted and lacking a strategic vision. The answer is to standardize so that each sector is the same. Then develop a BC plan that spreads load to surrounding sectors who work the load of the closed sector.
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Gee, why didn't anyone think of that before?

Especially in the case of an ARTCC where there's no need to actually see outside to do the job, it could be done just ad reliably from Pune India as it could from Aurora.
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Is an event like this less likely to happen in Pune India than Aurora Illinois?
 
roncachamp said:
Gee, why didn't anyone think of that before?



Is an event like this less likely to happen in Pune India than Aurora Illinois?
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No. But if it happened in Aurora we could have others do the job just as effectively, which is the point (I am not directly suggesting we outsource the job, I was illustrating ad absurdium the worst case was as viable as the best case).

If we standardize the ARTCCs, then those working Albuquerque Center could handle Boston Center just as effectively if Boston disappeared.
 
I heard that C90 called up the fire department but got no response.
 
SkyHog said:
No. But if it happened in Aurora we could have others do the job just as effectively, which is the point (I am not directly suggesting we outsource the job, I was illustrating ad absurdium the worst case was as viable as the best case).
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It did happen in Aurora.

If we standardize the ARTCCs, then those working Albuquerque Center could handle Boston Center just as effectively if Boston disappeared.
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The ARTCCs are pretty much standardized now. Same equipment, even the buildings. The differences are in airspace and procedures. There's no way around that because the nation is not uniform. Some ARTCCs have a lot of SUA and military traffic, others have very little. Not all of them deal with oceanic procedures or other nation's ATC. One size simply does not fit all.
 
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