"Fire" at HQ

When we first heard about it, we hoped that most of the building burned down, the sagging concrete floors had collapsed and at least some of the deadwood had burned. Then we heard it was just confined to one room. Then we heard it wasn't even a fire.

But "just a glitch?"

• A glitch in a computer control room left Chicago Police Headquarters without phone or Internet access for several hours Saturday afternoon.
  
  Previous reports said there was a small fire in the room, but Fire Media Affairs Dir. Larry Langford said crews found no burned cables or any indication of a fire.
  
  Crews responded at about 11:30 a.m. Saturday after an automatic extinguisher from the computer glitch alerted fire officials to police headquarters at 3510 S. Michigan Ave., Langford said.

Someone from HQ can correct us if need be, but isn't this like the second or third occurrence of the halon fire extinguisher systems going off in the past year or so? And it always seems to take out the entire system? Where's the redundancy? Why do we spend so much on technology, then don't spend any money on what's necessary to (A) maintain the system and (B) have some backup feature to maintain operations? According to our e-mails...

• no one downtown was willing to authorize paper arrests for 3 hours;
• dozens, maybe hundreds of officers citywide were stuck sitting on prisoners in Districts and held off the streets, affecting response times and back up

All we can figure is the hamsters running the wheels of the Department Intranet had a wildcat strike and refused to keep running in circles for mere cheese. Shortshanks is going to lay off 20 hamsters Monday morning in an effort to break their union.