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Fire halts flights at Chicago airports Chicago flights halted by fire 'set by air safety worker'
(about 7 hours later)
All flights in and out of Chicago's O'Hare and Midway were grounded due to a fire at an air traffic control facility, the Federal Aviation Administration has said. A fire in an air traffic control facility that grounded all flights in and out of Chicago's two major airports was set by an employee, officials say.
More than 300 hundred flights have been cancelled, according to a flight tracking website. Authorities found a man in the basement of the building with burns and self-inflicted stab wounds. Investigators say he used petrol to light the blaze.
Fire crews have put out the blaze but the airports remain closed. By Friday afternoon flights in and out of the airports were slowly resuming.
Firemen told the Chicago Tribune they found a man with self-inflicted injuries in the facility. More than 850 flights have been cancelled in Chicago alone and many already in the air were redirected.
The paper reported the man was found in the basement and was subsequently taken to hospital. Thomas Ahern, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which was taking part in the investigation, told the Associated Press news agency the 36-year-old man suspected of lighting the fire had been taken to hospital.
It is not known whether he is connected to the fire. "We believe he set the fire and he used some kind of accelerant," Aurora Police Chief Greg Thomas said in a news conference on Friday.
The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to reopen the airport within hours. Mr Ahern said petrol was used and the building was damaged by the fire and the water used to extinguish the blaze.
Officials said they did not yet have a possible motive for the act but said the suspect was a contractor for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and was authorised to be in the building. He had no ties to terrorism.
The fire broke out just before 06:00 local time (11:00 GMT) on Friday morning in the Aurora, Illinois, air traffic control building, 40 miles west (64km) of Chicago.
Air traffic control officials said the radio frequencies with which they worked went dead and the control system was immediately shifted to a back-up system, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Workers used the back-up system until they were forced to evacuate.
"The [radio] frequency failed," a unnamed controller told the newspaper. "Depending on how bad the fire was, it could be a real mess getting things back to normal."
One man was treated for smoke inhalation at the scene but no-one else was injured.
FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Cory said management of the region's airspace was transferred to another facility as the Aurora centre was evacuated.
By Friday afternoon, flights already on their way to Chicago were allowed to continue but landed at a slower pace.
Flights were taking off at a slower rate as well and air safety officials said they did not know when full service would be restored.