O’Hare last year handled 883,000 takeoffs and landings, ranking it as the second-busiest airport on the planet, according to Airports Council International. Then, 36-year-old Brian Howard apparently started the fire in the control center basement, the affidavit said. When firefighters arrived, they found him lying on the floor and slicing his throat with a knife, the affidavit said. The man accused of setting a fire in an air traffic control center, causing the shutdown of operations at Chicago O’Hare International and nearby Midway Airport, sent a private Facebook message to a relative just before he started the blaze, the FBI says in an affidavit. “Take a hard look in the mirror, I have,” the message said, according to the affidavit. “And this is why I am about to take out ZAU [the three-letter identification for the control center] and my life. … So I’m gonna smoke this blunt and move on, take care everyone.” Airlines at O’Hare canceled 1,550 flights and 470 at Midway, the Chicago Department of Aviation said at 8:45 p.m. Friday. Southwest Airlines suspended all fights for the day at Midway and Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport. The ripple affect caused the cancellation of flights at airports across the nation. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport had 70 cancellations on Friday, compared to seven on Thursday, according to Flightaware, a flight-tracking website. LaGuardia Airport in New York City had 56 on Friday and 10 on Thursday. By Friday afternoon, flights to the Chicago airports had resumed at a “reduced rate,” authorities said. The effect of the fire on Saturday’s flight activity has not been determined and it was not clear when the center would reopen. Faced transfer to Hawaii Howard had worked eight years in the center but faced a transfer to Hawaii, the FBI says in an affidavit. The documents don’t specify his job title but said he worked in “telecommunications matters.” The FBI said Howard arrived at the control center a little after 5 a.m. dragging a “hard-sided roller board suitcase” into the basement, where he usually worked. He allegedly sent the Facebook message about 30 minutes after arriving and the recipient notified police. At 5:42 a.m. somebody in the control center called 911 about a fire, the affidavit said. First responders found smoke in the air, blood on the floor, exposed cables, burned towels, a gasoline can, a lighter and a knife on the floor, the affidavit said. One paramedic saw some feet sticking out from under a table and found a shirtless Howard “in the process of actively slicing his throat with another knife,” the affidavit said. Howard, the affidavit said, told the paramedics to “leave me alone.” Police obtained search warrants for Howard’s home and found “legal documents that had been laid out in a staged manner, in an attempt to make them easier to find,” the affidavit said. The affidavit didn’t describe the documents. No court date has been set for Howard. If convicted, Howard faces a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of $ 250,000. CNN affiliate WLS reported that Howard was a machinist mate in the Navy from 1996 to 2000 with nothing unusual about his military record. He had a few traffic citations in 2007, but nothing serious, WLS said. “He seemed like an everyday, normal kind of guy to me,” neighbor Colin McGrath told WLS.ktla/2014/09/26/all-flights-in-and-out-of-chicagos-airports-stopped-after-fire-at-air-traffic-control-facility/
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 22:31:55 +0000
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