Fire Forces Evacuation Of Newark Air Traffic Control Tower

Hours-long security lines plagued airports across the country over the weekend, but Monday didn't bring the relief many travelers were hoping for. A fatal crash late Sunday night between an Air Canada Express jet and a Port Authority vehicle left LaGuardia closed for most of Monday. The situation in the region only got more chaotic, though, when ABC News reports a possible early morning fire forced nearby Newark Liberty International Airport to close an Air Traffic Control tower temporarily.

Per statements made by the Federal Aviation Administration, at about 7:30 a.m., Newark grounded all flights after hearing reports of smoke inside the tower. Newark and the FAA reportedly worked quickly to transfer flight responsibilities to other towers and restart operations about an hour later, but in the time it took to get things moving again, the tower closure and resulting pause on flights still impacted hundreds of flights in and out of Newark. 

LaGuardia, on the other hand, still doesn't expect to restart operations until at least 2:00 p.m. on Monday afternoon. Whether that will actually happen, though, still remains to be seen. The crash injured more than 40 people and tragically claimed the lives of both pilots. 

While the smoke in the Newark ATC tower is likely a one-off event that unfortunately occurred at the worst possible time, the chaos plaguing airports in the U.S. isn't nearly as random. A little over a week ago, the Transportation Security Administration agents who were supposed to be paid that Friday didn't get their checks, because TSA is part of the Department of Homeland Security, and DHS is currently shut down as part of the fight over funding. And that's where things really started getting bad.

For some reason, "Yeah, we're going to need you to keep showing up to work even if you don't get paid," didn't work, and ever since missing their last paycheck, the number of TSA workers calling out skyrocketed. At least in theory, once DHS gets its funding restored, they'll all receive backpay, but that's little comfort when you have bills to pay today. Plus, it's not like Trump has the best track record of paying people what he owes them. With TSA short-staffed the lines were already growing longer. These short-term shut downs and emergencies haven't helped. 

At any other time, that would have been bad enough, but airports are also dealing with an influx of spring break travelers right now. As for why DHS is shut down, Republicans don't currently have the votes they need to fund DHS, but they've also refused to negotiate with congressional Democrats, so here we are. Again. But don't worry, though, Republicans gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement got a giant pile of unrestricted money when they passed Trump's last spending bill, so ICE is flush with cash and can continue terrorizing communities while TSA agents go unpaid. Trump vowed to send ICE agents into airports to take over for the disaffected TSA agents, which will obviously be a great idea with no problems whatsoever.