Before Labor Day even arrived, the southeastern region of the U.S. already saw it had a difficult season ahead of it.
Hurricane Harvey was headed for Houston, Hurricane Irma was spooling up in the Atlantic Ocean and multiple other storms were already building up steam.
Chris Rozansky, executive director of the Naples Airport Authority, said the airport does pre-storm preparation in June, but with when it became Irma was going to hit the region it was the first time in 12 years they faced a hurricane.
“You know you’re having a bad week when Jim Cantore from The Weather Channel, the director of FEMA, your governor, your congressman, your POTUS and Vice POTUS are all come through your airport,” Rozansky said.
A Westward push
James Parish, CEO of Punta Gorda Airport (PDG), said the last commercial flight left the airport four days before Irma hit. They made sure all 300 T-hangars on location were secured before the storm hit.
Parish said the airport was devastated after Hurricane Charlie, so all of the facilities were rebuilt to withstand major storms.
“We never closed the airfield,” he said. “The tower closed the day of the storm when winds reached 45 knots, but we manned the FBO until that evening, until the winds reached 60 knots.”
Don DeGraw, director of airports for Monroe County, Florida, said leaders there were already following Irma at the end of August as the system was making its way off the African coast. As it grew into a Category 5 storm, all eyes were on the storm as it took aim at Florida.
As the storm tracked a path showing it would hit the Keys, DeGraw said local leaders activated its EOC and began continual updates on the storm.
“By Tuesday, we realized there was significant potential for this storm, which was at that time a Cat 5 to hit the Keys, so it was decided on Tuesday that on Wednesday morning there would be a mandatory evacuation for all the tourists in the Keys,” he said. “By Wednesday afternoon, the mandatory evacuation for everyone who was in the Keys would kick in.”
Prior to the mandatory evacuation order DeGraw said staff at Florida Keys Marathon International Airport (MTH) and Key west International Airport (EYW) were buttoning up the facilities to withstand the hurricane. Once the order was issued, staff hard to prepare the airports and give time to allow everyone to get out safely.
Originally DeGraw said EYW was going to put out the last air carrier flight on Wednesday when the storm was expected to hit on Saturday. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) told him it planned to stop all screenings on Wednesday as well, but DeGraw said they were able to convince them to run a bare minimum crew on Thursday as well to make sure all air carrier flights and employees.
“It’s really kind of a mass coordination effort,” he said. “We kept close communication with the airline folks and TSA and everyone at the airport who makes the air carrier piece of it happen.”
Before the storm hit, Rozansky said Naples stocked up on fuel before the storm, asking planes leaving the area to take less and make a stop en route to their final destination instead. Fuel trucks were also parked in different areas of the airfield to minimize the potential of losing the entire fleet when the storm hit.
Rozansky said they bartered with corporate flights coming into Naples by offering to sell them more fuel if they brought water with them to help supply the airport while going through recovery efforts.
Fuel supplies at the airport’s rental car facilities were also leveraged to assist employees in refueling their own vehicles so they didn’t have to face lines at gas stations in the region, which took upwards of two hours just to get gas.
“To me, that’s No. 1,” Rozansky said. “We’re here to serve the public, the traveling public, however, if you don’t take care of your employees and you don’t take care of their basic needs, then you won’t have the people available to do serve the public.”
Texas Airports Avoid Big Hits
Kim Bridger-Hunt, marketing manager for Corpus Christi International Airport (CRP), said the storm made landfall about 30 miles north of the city, so the worst of the winds didn’t batter the facility.
On Aug. 24, United and American flew their last flights from CRP, while Southwest was still able to get a flight out the morning the storm hit. However, it took a few days to get air service back because of the cancellations in Houston.
The Houston Airport System said they avoided major damage to its facilities, however, flooding issues in the metro area created challenges with getting flights operational again once the storm subsided.
Kim Bridger-Hunt said CRP can never be too prepared when it comes to things like generator maintenance, so the airport had power throughout the hurricane and afterward when most of the city was down.
Corpus Christi also kept its ride out team to only a handful of essential employees.
“Having our Master Electrician here during the hurricane and in the immediate aftermath was critical for us. Even though we had little to no damage, there were members of our ride out crew who didn’t leave the airport for three days,” she said. “Equipping them with food, ice, cots, and whatever other comforts are possible will help to make difficult situations a lot more tolerable.”
We’ve all heard the saying, “Expect the unexpected.” When the community is going through something like this, you never know who you may need to help or in what way. When aircraft that are carrying evacuees begin to show up and the prior notification never made it to the airport, you realize that while it may be impossible to be totally prepared, it’s very possible to be ready for anything.
Florida Gets Flying Again
After Irma rolled through Sept. 10, DeGraw said he and staff wanted to get back to the airports as soon as possible so emergency flights could commence Monday. The drive to MTH, which normally would take an hour, took more than five, DeGraw said.
DeGraw said peak wind gusts in Marathon were likely in the 120 to 130 miles per hour range coupled with significant storm surge. Staff arrived at MTH to find the whole airfield covered with debris, the fence was knocked down and many of the hangars were flooded.
“You name it, it was on the runway,” he said. “From 500 gallon propane tanks that were leaking to children’s toys to tooth brushes to anything you can possibly imaging that could be in a house or under a house was out on the airfield all over the place.”
Personnel worked tirelessly throughout the night to clear the runway at MTH. They did FOD walks and hand cleared most of the debris before they were able to get tractors on the airfield.
“We filtered back into the community, and we were back there by Midnight on Sunday and we had community members out there walking the runway, we did a FOD sweep, the city of Marathon Fire Department is located on the airport, so we got all the firemen out there and we started at one end and walked the runway and picked up all the major debris,” DeGraw said. “The next morning, the majority of the debris was off the runway, myself and one of the maintenance workers from the airport, we started cleaning up the safety area, so we got the edges of the safety area clear of debris.”
By noon the day after the storm, the National Guard was landing a C-130 to assist in the recovery effort.
“When I arrived at the airport at a rainy cold Sunday night I was surprised to see people out there already picking up garbage on the runway and that was community leaders and the city fire department,” he said.
EYW experienced sustained winds of 75 miles per hour and gusts of about 100 miles per hour.
“The first week we didn’t have power, except from what was from the generator,” he said. “We had no water no communication, no Internet, no telephone, no cell phone coverage, intermittent satellite phone service.”
There was about 6 inches of water in the terminal at MTH. Staff and the National Guard were able to clear the doors to open it up and begin drying out the facility.
DeGraw said both airports are back and fully running, but the long term issue for MTH is getting the fence back up and hangar repairs. A lot of the doors and roofs sustained damaged from the storm. For EYW, there have been more electrical issues due to wind driven rain. All of the security card readers were down, lighting was damaged and all of the gates were not working.
DeGraw said it showed them it’s important to have more electrical components like security card readers, gate controllers and lighting on hand before a storm like Irma hits is important so they don’t have to order parts.
“Right now we’re in pretty good shape and just doing some minor roof repairs at Key West and finishing the electrical work,” he said.
Parish said PDG was able to clear debris from the airfield the next day. Because there was minimal damage to the airport, extra staff were dispatched to other airports in Florida like Naples to assist workers reopen the facilities.
Rozansky said they expected commercial power to be down after the storm, so staff made sure to place backup generators on everything from the general aviation terminal to the fuel farm. Temporary living quarters were also set up for workers, who didn’t have power at their homes and would otherwise face going home to sleep in 90 degree heat without air conditioning.
Naples suffered about $2 million in damage, Rozansky said, but employees were able to get the facility up and running in quick order to allow emergency relief flights use the facility. Even when air traffic control tower staff said they needed a working restroom in order to do their job and a Port-a-Potty the airport ordered never arrived, staff were able to find another being used to by a contactor at the airport, which had been blown into some weeds, then used ARFF equipment to sanitize it and get it useable.
As the Naples works with a consultant on FEMA claims and insurance, Rozansky said the airport is back open for business. Even hangars damaged in the storm have reclaimed tenants by offering them a discount on monthly rent until they’re fully fixed.
But as Irma falls further into the past, Rozansky said it’s important to stress the area open and ready for everyone to come back.
“The national media really did a great job of telling the story of the devastation…but the community is up and running and the beaches are beautiful,” he said. “There are some trees and vegetation that was knocked over, but even though there was far more horticultural damage than structural damage, we’re a tourism-based economy. It’s really disappointing the national media was here and reporting on these tragic events, but nobody came back to do the story on the recovery so we can say ‘hey, we’re open and ready for the winter tourists.”
