O'Hare employees question airport security

CHICAGO, April 24 (UPI) -- Employees at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport question the reliability of the airport's 15-year-old security camera and electronic monitoring system.

The Chicago Sun-Times Monday reported problems with malfunctioning equipment, including a corrupted data file of feeds from the system's 1,000 video cameras.

The head of the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications said a software glitch caused an airport-wide problem in early April forcing operators to call up video manually.

When the system works as designed, video automatically comes up after an alarm is triggered.

"The video can still be viewed within seconds," said OEMC Executive Director Andrew Velasquez. "In no way shape or form was security at O'Hare compromised as a result of this issue."

Velazquez told the newspaper the computer problem was repaired last week but employees say the system is not fixed and that cameras still go up and down randomly.

Employees also said a portion of a 3-year-old electronic perimeter fence was damaged to make way for new runway construction.