Tampa and Orlando are up and running, SRQ not until Wednesday; Ramon Lopez looks at a small airport in the region.
By Ramon Lopez
Original Air Date: October 11, 2024
Host: Reporter Ramon Lopez puts the focus on airports, and he ended up talking to the director of a small airport in this area, in Venice.
Ramon Lopez: Flights in and out of Florida resumed Thursday night and Friday morning, following closures due to Hurricane Milton. Tampa International said its first flight left Friday at 8am. Orlando International reopened on Thursday night, although the Central Florida hub airport sustained some damage.
A casualty at Venice Municipal Airport. Photo: Ramon Lopez
Sarasota-Bradenton International contractors and employees were working to repair two sections of the main concourse roof damaged by Hurricane Milton, with hopes of reopening the airport by Saturday morning. Repairs began Thursday. The airport CEO and president, Rick Piccolo, hoped to have repairs finished by the end of the week so flights could resume by Saturday afternoon. But Friday morning, Piccolo said it may take longer.
Another local airfield, the Venice airport, that was also battered by hurricane Milton – like the town it is located in. Venice airport saw general aviation planes flipped over and hangars damaged, but like the town, the damage was less than anticipated, says Nick Dumas, the airport manager.
Nick Dumas: Right now the airport’s closed. There’s still a lot of debris out there. We had multiple hangars suffer serious damage, so right now, we’re just going to keep the airport closed until further notice, until we can ensure that it’s going to be safe for everybody out there.
RL: And how many planes were damaged – can you estimate that right now?
ND: I don’t have a firm number on how many were damaged. Our adjusters out there right now walking around, to assess the state of everything. But, I mean, we were expecting there’s going to be quite a few that are damaged.
RL: We’re talking dozens?
ND: No, probably around a dozen.
RL: I saw that some of the airplanes were flipped.
ND: Yeah, yeah. We have five or six.
RL: It’s now Friday. If you had all day yesterday, did you actually ride some of the airplanes up and haul them away? What have you done at this point?
ND: Right now we’re cleaning up the foreign object debris, or FOD. We’re cleaning that up. Like I said, we have our insurance adjuster out there right now doing all the assessments for safety and what damage we have out there that we can clean up. There’s a good amount of sheet metal and other pieces of metal. We have a lot of hangar doors that are down or resting on aircraft, or falling into the hangars themselves. So right now, that’s why we don’t want anybody coming onto the airport, because those doors are leaning, and we don’t want people to be touching them, and then they’ll fall and potentially injure people. And planes are not being allowed to take off and land as well. Yeah, we’re closed, but the runways have much FOD on it. Actually, right now, the runways are clear. It’s just that we have FOD that’s either on the taxiways or immediately adjacent to the taxiways. So we don’t want that wind gusts come through and then blow it into the plane while it’s taxiing.
RL: So based on what you’ve seen, and based on what the weather forecast was, how bad are things here, and how bad could it have been?
ND: I mean, with what the forecasts were, we expected a lot worse. We don’t have nearly the damage that we had when we had Ian. So we’re much better off in that way. But right now, like I said, we’re still closed because we just want to make sure that it’s safe when the people go out there to check on their aircraft, that there’s not going to be anything that’s going to fall on them or potentially blow into them and hurt somebody.
RL: This is Ramon Lopez for WSLR 96.5.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6pm.