Date: 201405
Local time of day: 1801-2400
Location: ZKC.ARTCC, KS
Aircraft: Commercial Fixed Wing
Operator: Air Carrier
Operating under: Part 121
Flight plan: IFR
Mission: Passenger
Flight phase: Descent
Airspace: Class A ZKC
ATC / advisory: Center ZKC
Second aircraft: Commercial Fixed Wing
Reporter organization: Government
Reporter function: Enroute
Reporter qualification: Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Human factors: Confusion; Distraction; Workload; Troubleshooting
Anomaly: ATC Issue All Types; Conflict Airborne Conflict; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence
Detector: Person Air Traffic Control
Result: Air Traffic Control Separated Traffic
Contributing factors: ATC Equipment / Nav Facility / Buildings; Weather
Primary problem: ATC Equipment / Nav Facility / Buildings

Narrative: There was weather along the northern boundary between ZKC/ZAU and extending east into ZID.  There was also weather west of my sector near STL. This weather had been forecast since 1100. We started the shift short. When weather started to build TMU was asked why we were still running ARLYN/BEKKI departures from ORD. Cowes sector was extremely busy at that time. I took over the position in a traffic lull. I was informed I was getting ARLYN /BEKKI departures in the face of all the MDW arrivals from ZID was to come through me and they wanted them FL270 and below. All of the ORD departures that were supposed to be over ARLYN / BEKKI were deviating. I started getting IND landers from the Roberts sector deviating and I needed to try and get them to LOA altitude FL240. I started getting departures off of IND airport headed right for the weather over STL that I needed to reroute and try and get the MDW arrivals and IND arrivals through. The sector was out of control. I had a D-side. It was alerted nearly the entire time that I was sitting at the position which was nearly 2 hours. I asked for a tracker. When the event occurred between the Aircraft X and Aircraft Y the sector was on overload. Then there was an equipment failure. The R-side and d-side keyboard locked up. Then we lost the radar scope. I do not know what happened. There was so much going on that conflict alert went off. Mode C on one aircraft indicated they were at FL340 with another altitude as an assigned altitude in the data block the other was level at FL340. I expedited the north aircraft lower. Then turned out the south aircraft. I do not know if separation was lost. After the sector was more manageable the tracker left. We were told to move Cowes sector to a different scope. After that scope was turned on then we had to bring the traffic back to the Sector 12 position because it wasn't working properly there. This should have never happened in this situation with volume and complexity. This weather was predicted hours before it actually happened. TMU and Central flow had ample time to take care of this before this happened. Our Front Line Managers had been in close contact with TMU. There is no reason for this sector to ever compromise safety. They were working all of the MDW arrivals and ORD arrivals and departure at the same time with deviations. There were also MSP over flights and IND departures and arrivals with deviations.




Synopsis: ZKC Controller reports of a session with weather and high traffic volume where the radar system keyboard locks up; and then they lose the radar. Controller doesn't know if he has a loss of separation between two aircraft.