Commercial Fixed Wing
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 7
Situational Awareness; Workload
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence
Air Traffic Control Provided Assistance
Company Policy; Human Factors; Staffing
Once again; the midnight controllers were put in a situation that was completely unacceptable; unsafe; and just simply dangerous.  I walked into the area and the midnight controller has over 40 aircraft in the list and I would estimate was talking to 25-30 aircraft.  There was nothing in place to help the Controller; TMU had done nothing; [and] the Mid Supervisor was doing nothing.  When I took the position; it took me 25 minutes to get control of the sector and split it out and by then; we probably should have had four sectors open.  It was complete breakdown of all procedures we follow; safety was totally compromised this morning. Do anything; anything would have been better than what happened this morning.  No restrictions in place; no Supervisor getting the other midnighter back; literally nothing was done.
ZDC Controller reported a sector was overloaded at the end of the mid-shift and no one was there to help the Controller.