St. Lucie County International (KFPR) Loses Hangars, Planes, to
Hurricane Frances
By ANN Correspondent Kevin R.C. "Hognose" O'Brien
When will it end for Florida? Maybe with [Hurricane] Ivan, which
is likely to pass to the west of the Florida Peninsula proper,
at this writing -- not that that is good news for the other
Gulf-coast states, as Ivan is expected to pick up energy from the
warm Gulf after visiting western Cuba and turning generally north.
And not, really, that there are any guarantees in the computer
models the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration
relies on to plot the advance of tropical storms; they speak the
crafty scientific language of probabilities, not the comforting
certainties we like to hear. In the meantime, the process of
recovery from Charley was interrupted so that dealing with Frances
could begin.
Hurricane Frances, which is at this writing (2000Z) northeast of
Atlanta and downgraded to "tropical depression" status from its
peak, where it edged into Hurricane Category Five briefly, hit some
of the airfields already battered by Charley, plus a bunch of
fields that dodged the bullet last time. In this category is St.
Lucie County International (KFPR) in Fort Pierce (FL), which is
reported by Lindsay Jones of the Palm Beach Post to have suffered
the loss of a number of hangars, buildings and aircraft on site.
County officials didn't have a single solid figure for the dollar
value of the damage yet, but their initial estimates soar into the
tens of millions of dollars.
As the first powerful hurricane to make landfall this season,
Charley caught a lot of complacent operators unprotected. Frances
was a weaker hurricane with winds a little over half the speed of
Charley's 145+ knots, but aviation operators in its path were much
readier to evacuate their aircraft. Weaker than Charley or not,
Frances was still strong enough to rip roofs off of commercial
buildings and collapse hangars. Most of the 185 aircraft based at
the field rode the storm out in safety, elsewhere; but those that
remained found that hangars didn't always offer sufficient
shelter.
The hangar of Mirabella Yachts' Aviation Division collapsed,
crushing eight aircraft inside, county official Dennis Grimm told
Jones. Mirabella has been active in, among other things, Grumman
Albatross conversion and maintenance and two of the destroyed
aircraft are believed to be the large Grumman amphibs, possibly
including Mirabella's own N42MY, which was the last Albatross
built.
One major tenant, Pan Am International Flight Academy, like many
smaller tenants, flew all their flyable aircraft to safety inland,
in Pan Am's case at Little Rock, AR. But the aircraft and other
equipment in Pan Am's maintenance hangar were damaged or destroyed
when the roof of the hangar was ripped off. This school is
currently offering Ft Pierce flight students the choice of standing
by until repairs are made -- they have already secured a substitute
maintenance hangar -- or transferring to Pan Am's Deer Valley (AZ)
campus.
A building used by US Customs at the battered airport was also
left roofless and exposed to the elements.
The hangar of LanShe Aerospace, the company which owns the type
certificates and production rights to the Lake Amphibian and Micco
aircraft, was also damaged, with unknown damage to the aircraft and
tooling inside.
One lesson of this hurricane season: conventional hangar
construction is false security against hurricane-force winds.
Airport Director Paul
Phillips was shocked at the extent of the damage. "I expect that
this type of disaster is going to catastrophic to many of our
tenants," he told the Palm Beach Post -- despite the insurance the
airport requires tenants to carry. He estimated the damage at $40
million, while warning that he hadn't seen the extent of the damage
inside the ruined buildings. County Administrator Doug Anderson
told the Naples Daily News that airport damage could exceed $75
million.
Elsewhere in Florida, damage was not as severe. Orlando
International was closed for almost three days. (The only time it's
ever been closed longer was when all aviation was grounded after
9/11); Tampa bounced right back; Melbourne was ready to operate but
the FAA did not grant permission to resume commercial flights right
away. But at Ft. Pierce, only emergency services, public use, and
media aircraft were operating, and the St. Lucie County airport --
like most of the county -- remained without power. In Daytona
Beach, Embry-Riddle managers, still smarting from the expensive
lesson of Charley, flew their aircraft inland to safety -- and
decided to leave them there until the course of the next storm is
known with more certainty. The students will not be returning until
the 13th -- by which time all power outages and other disruptions
should be taken care of.