Last Friday, September 26, a man that wrecked hundred of weekend plans for those flying in and out of Chicago O'Hare and Midway, had unsuccessfully tried to take his own life by starting the blaze. Brian Howard, 36, was a contract employee at the FAA radar center in Aurora. According to the FAA, the Aurora facility will not be fully operation until October 13 and O'Hare and Midway are still feeling the effects of the fire this week. It has raised the question of how safe are airports? There are over 87,000 flights throughout the United States each day. With all of the restrictions for passengers, it makes you wonder if the rules are the same for the employees. What is being done that ensures the safety and efficiency of the structures that control all the traffic? If one goes down, last weekend is a perfect example of the domino effect they cause. It is not just one flight, it is incoming, outgoing, connecting and thousand of people's jobs. I do not think that anything is protecting other airports from the same thing happening again.
Check out one of the latest article on the sentencing of Howard and the clean up of both airports: http://goo.gl/0v04Nv
I completely agree with you. I think after 9/11 everyone freaked out and put a huge stress on airports being so tightly covered and secured because they did not want anything to happen as tragic as this happened. I feel that America was just stunned that this had happened and did everything theycould to prevent something like this but once you go for a few more years with no problems the security becomes lazy and so use to the normal day to day routine they are not as aware as they were before. Sometimes it take a tragic accident like 9/11 to wake everyone up and say listen this isn't a joke you need to be alert and very strict with your job. I also think it is an awesome question to wonder about how to employees are screened and if they are safe to run the airports? Great post!
ReplyDeleteNice post. Well-written. You did a good job of providing a detailed analysis of the incident that occurred at O'Hare and Midway last month, shutting down weekend travel plans for hundreds of airline passengers. Your lead sentence cuts to the news of the story -the fact that hundreds of weekend plans for airline travelers were wrecked by a man who tried unsuccessfully to take his own life by starting a blaze. You put readers right into the action and give them the most important facts - that the Aurora FAA facility would not be in operation until Oct. 13 and that both airports were still reeling from the affects of the fire a week later. You raise some important questions for readers to ponder and you explore the bigger issue, "How safe are our airports." Finally, you link readers to an article on the sentencing of Brian Howard, the contract FAA employee who created the fiasco that shutdown the two airports, stranding hundreds of passengers.
ReplyDelete