Chicago Traffic Control Center Fire: Australia Has a Good Idea

First, the good news. Nobody died. The suicidal employee who destroyed a key air traffic control center near Chicago, Illinois, has charged with one count of "destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities."

Now, the not-so-good news. Almost 2,000 flights were cancelled. Chicago's O'Hare and Midway International Airports are among the busiest in the world. I've read that flight schedules are still getting unsnarled.

Brian Howard probably had a reason for destroying part of Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center (ZAU)'s data transmission system, and then trying to kill himself. My guess is that at this point, he's the only person who knows why he acted as he did.

Maybe he was despondent over his coming transfer to Hawaii. From Chicago. With winter coming on. Or maybe not.

Air Traffic Control in the 21st Century

(Air traffic control: 1962 and 2006.)

More good news: the FAA's control center used fiber optics and data cable to carry radar signals, digitized radio transmissions, and other critical information. While figuring out how to rebuild the Chicago center, the FAA won't have to learn how to use Information Age tech.

I'm also relieved to learn that the FAA was able to switch control of ZAU's territory to another control center in the area. It would have been nice if it had taken less time: but 'next day' transfer is better than 'next week.'

Predictably, politicos have started declaring that they'll 'investigate' what happened. My hope is that folks with a clue can keep them from doing too much damage.

I also hope that the FAA decides to take a long, hard, look at setting up functional redundancies. This wouldn't have to be a complete duplicate of ZAU, sitting idle unless there was an emergency. I understand that Australia has 'duplicate' air traffic control centers: at opposite ends of the country.

The United States should be able to follow that example: maybe five 'big' centers: in Alaska, Hawaii, Los Angeles, Chicago, and the Washington DC-New York City megalopolis.

I'm pretty sure that setting up cross-training, so that controllers in one center would have some familiarity with the other four; and protocols for transferring data; would take time and effort to set up. But I think the results would be worthwhile.

Related posts:

• "Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17: This Time it's Over Land"
  (July 18, 2014)
• "Washington Navy Shipyard: Death, Security, and Voices"
  (September 17, 2013)
• "Pentagon's New(ish) Policy About Hack Attacks"
  (May 31, 2011)
• "Euronews, " 'Dustbin' Airline," Cultures, and the War on Terror"
  (July 2, 2009)
• "Florida Power Outage: Not an Attack; But a Reasonable Preview"
  (February 26, 2008)

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¹ Excerpt from the news:

" Air-Traffic Vulnerabily Examined in Fire Halting Flights"
Alan Levin, Bloomberg (September 28, 2014)

"The havoc created by a suicidal technician at a Chicago-area flight-control center has some lawmakers asking how a single person armed with gasoline and knives could bring down part of the U.S. air-traffic system.

"Damage caused last week by a man police said was trying to disable the facility and kill himself was so severe that the Federal Aviation Administration has decided to rebuild the center’s central nerve system from scratch, the agency said in an e-mail.

" 'The fact that one person can do this indicates there is a problem in our system and we need to take a careful look at this,' Representative Dan Lipinski, a Democrat from Chicago who sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said in an interview with a Chicago TV station....

"...Paul Rinaldi, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said 'This is one of the most challenging situations that air traffic controllers and other FAA employees have faced since 9/11.'

" 'The damage to this critical facility is unlike anything we have seen before,' Rinaldi said in an e-mail.

"The arsonist targeted an area containing the data transmission system that drives modern air traffic, according to an affidavit filed in court by a FBI agent.

"Fiber optics and data cable carry everything from radar signals showing aircraft locations to the digitized radio transmissions that allow controllers to talk to pilots. Without it, FAA centers can't function.

"While that data system in some ways makes air-traffic centers more vulnerable to an attack, it also lets the FAA more easily transfer responsibility for controlling flights to other facilities, said Hansman, who has studied the FAA's system....

"...A day after the fire, controllers at a similar center controlling high-altitude traffic near Indianapolis began handling flights in some Chicago Center’s airways, Doug Church, a spokesman for the air-traffic controllers union, said in an e-mail. Controllers at centers near Cleveland, Minneapolis and Kansas City were doing the same thing, Church said.

"The FAA was sending Chicago center controllers to other area facilities to work traffic because of their knowledge of local flight routes, the FAA said in a Sept. 27 e-mail.

" 'The FAA is using all the tools at its disposal to safely restore as much service as quickly as possible,' the agency said.

"Newer telecommunication technology means that controllers no longer have to be located next to the radio antenna and radar to handle traffic, Hansman said.

"In Australia, the government has built two air-traffic centers on opposite ends of the country that can each handle the other's traffic in an emergency, he said. While the U.S. facilities can't switch as seamlessly, they are more flexible than just a few years ago, he said...."

Florida Power Outage: Not an Attack But a Reasonable Preview

About 4.4 million people (WSVN) (U.S. Usage - 4,400,000) people are without, or have been without, power in southern Florida.

Miami-Dade Schools are locked down, parents told not to pick up their kids - traffic is a mess, with no traffic lights and twits blowing through intersections.

Just to make things interesting, there's severe weather in the area, including a tornado watch (seems that the tornado warning ended a little while ago).

No, this probably isn't a terrorist attack. That's what Homeland Security is saying. Odds are that we'll learn that a substation had problems, and that the outage spread.

So, why post this in "Another War-on Terror Blog?"

Hackers shut down power in several cities recently, all of them outside America. It's not at all unlikely that terrorists will try to do the same thing in the United States. And, they might succeed.

What's happening in Florida right now is a pretty good preview of what could happen:

• No traffic signals
• Snarled traffic and vehicular accidents
• schools locked down
• Commuter trains stop running
• Weather warnings and other emergency information can't be broadcast - and received
• With luck, backup systems at airports and hospitals work

Latest information, from Florida Power and Light: Two Turkey Point nuclear reactors "tripped offline" for unknown reasons, and so did two oil-fueled generators.

What if Islamic Hackers Turned Out the Lights in America?

Hackers put out the lights in several cities recently, all of them outside America. Utilities engineers learned this from a senior CIA analyst, Tom Donahue, at a trade conference.

Last March, the "Aurora Generator Test" showed that a hole in software used by American utilities could let a hacker destroy a large electrical generator, creating a fireworks display in the process. That particular hole has been patched, but there could be others.

And, it's possible that Islamic terrorists will cut power in American cities.

If they do, the jihadists may do an unintended favor for those people who are upset about Muslim communities having babies faster than their non-Muslim neighbors.

The Great Northeast Blackout of 1965, and others in 1977 and 2003, resulted in millions of people having time on their hands, with no electronic distractions. I understand that there was a distinct spike in the birthrate in blacked-out areas, nine months after the outages.

The Mosul Dam: Keep an Eye on This

"The Mosul Dam is in good condition and it is not in danger," is what Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraq government spokesman, said in a statement. "This dam is under constant observation by the Iraqi government and all precautionary measures and needed maintenance are being taken."

Most of the time, I admire a positive attitude.

This isn't one of those times.

The Mosul Dam is one of Iraq's landmarks, and the largest dam in Iraq. It holds back eight billion cubic meters of the Tigris River's water (about 10.4 billion cubic yards). That's a lot of water. The Mosul Dam is also the site of a major hydroelectric power plant: which makes it very important in a power-starved Iraq.

Here's a timeline:

• 1979: Saddam Hussein becomes Iraqi president
• 1980: Iran-Iraq War begins
• 1980: Mosul Dam construction
  • 1980: begins
  • 1984: ends
• 1988: Iran-Iraq War ends
• 1991: Persian Gulf War
• 2003: War on Terror removes Saddam Hussein from power

Saddam's regime put the two-mile-long, earthfill, Mosul dam on land that's made of

• Marls
• Soluble gypsum
• Anhydrite
• Karstic limestone

The mix is constantly dissolving, according to a specialist at a U.S. embassy in Iraq.

The US embassy's statement says: "To manage the risk, the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources has been conducting continuous grouting operations to fill voids and fractures created by the dissolution of the foundation since the 1980s."

The Independent (UK) quoted "one source," saying that if water levels behind the Mosul Dam stay where they are, there's a "reasonably high" chance of an immediate failure, and that failure is "most certain" within the next few years.

Briefly, the situation is:

• Saddam Hussein's regime built a earthfill dam on dissolving rock
• Iraqi engineers have been patching it ever since
• Engineers have determined that the dam, as it stands, is doomed
• The Iraqi government says it isn't

I'm reminded of discussions between engineers and management types, before the shuttle Challenger blew up.

If the Mosul Dam breaks, Mosul is in trouble. The city is 20 miles downstream from the dam. When the flood reaches that city of 1.7 million people, odds are that 70% of the city will be destroyed.

By the time the flood reaches Baghdad, it shouldn't be quite so much of a problem.

As I said before, I approve of a positive attitude. But not when there's a disolving dam upstream from a major city.

I can understand the Iraqi government's attitude. They're in the unenviable position of trying to put Iraq back together, after over three decades of daft planning and negligible maintenance. From a Public Relations point of view, at this moment the last thing the Iraqi national government needs is to admit that there's one more foul-up to fix.

I hope that someone over there looks at long-range consequences, and has a plan for dealing with an earthfill dam that's losing ground.

Why that title, "The Mosul Dam: Keep an Eye on This?"

Although I hope this doesn't happen, there's a good chance that the Mosul Dam will fail, catastrophically, sometime between now and a few years from now.

When/if that happens, I expect that America will be blamed. There's a sort of foreshadowing of this in the words of an unidentified aid, quoted in The Independent: "Everybody knows about the threat but they have other preoccupations and, in the case of foreigners, it is now conveniently in Iraqi hands."

After all, it was American engineers were among those who said that the dam's foundations were dissolving.