What’s next? Rain-weary airport, seaport rebound from surprise storm — and think about future mitigation

The rains deceptively arrived as just another South Florida drive-by drenching. But they stuck around, for hours, dropping more than 2 feet of water on the airport, seaport and surrounding neighborhoods of Fort Lauderdale.

By the time the jarring, unexpected storm of April 12 was over, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport had closed, forcing the cancellations of hundreds of flights and stranding thousands of air travelers.

At Port Everglades, the main conduit for gasoline supplies into the region, a dozen fuel terminals invaded by floodwaters were forced to halt operations, prompting countless motorists to form gas lines around Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties.

With hurricane season less than two months away, the episode raises a critical question: How will two of the county’s main transportation nerve centers cope with a repeat occurrence?

By and large, the approach is to stick with current best practices, and examine changes that make sense over the long term, according to the top managers of both hubs.

“The recent flooding event that impacted FLL was due to an unprecedented and historic amount of rainfall over our area in less than 24 hours,” Mark Gale, CEO/director of aviation at the Broward County Aviation Department, said in an emailed statement. “For decades, we’ve managed fairly well at FLL through hurricanes and while we’ve had some flooding, it’s nothing compared to what we experienced last week.”

The airport reopened April 14 and the airlines have returned to normal schedules.

Currently, he said, the airport’s annual hurricane preparations and readiness calls for the maintenance team to canvass all properties and roadways “to ensure the drains are clear of debris and surface areas devoid of objects that could potentially become projectiles during high winds or otherwise impact draining capabilities.”

“Our airport tenants are also required to do similar reviews of their respective operating areas to flag and remove items that pose a threat to safety or airport operations during hurricane season,” he said.

But he said the deployment of pumps for water removal “are generally more effective for smaller, more localized flooding issues.”

“The use of pumps to remove water from the airport’s roadways and airfields during last week’s historic rainfall event was not a feasible option given that all areas surrounding the airport that we could potentially have funneled the pumped water into, were themselves totally flooded and overflowing,” Gale said.

But as the department review the storm’s impact, “we are open to exploring any new and viable means of flood mitigation that may arise to shore up FLL’s resiliency.”

Jonathan Daniels, chief executive and port director at Port Everglades, said it’s no easy task to plan for storms such as the one that befell Broward.

“We had 26 inches over a 24-hour period,” he said. “You do everything you can in planning to put yourself in a position to handle certain flood and weather events.

Thus far, damage assessments have yet to be completed and no cost estimates have been made. But one of the more notable items damaged at the airport were the two arresting systems designed to stop aircraft from overshooting the runways. One of the systems was broken up by floodwaters. The other was damaged when a small plane overran a runway before the storm.

Gale said the manufacturer visited the airport to inspect damage. He said he anticipated receiving a report next week so his department can coordinate the next steps for repairs or replacement.

The process, he said, “could take several months.”

At the seaport, gas terminal flooding

“This storm event — and there are no excuses,” Daniels said, “occurred when we were looking at a traditional afternoon Florida rainstorm that turned from a short-term event to what became unprecedented.”

The biggest problem at the seaport, he said, was that the space between protective berms surrounding gasoline tanks quickly filled with water.

All 12 of the port’s terminals closed so the private companies that operate them could remove the water, assess the damage and carefully restore their pumping stations to normal.

“It’s not so easy immediately removing that,” Daniels said. “First you have to make sure there is no contamination. And then after the dewatering occurs there needs to be an assessment of any potential damage. The last thing they want or we want is to turn the fuel back on and have there be some kind of environmental damage, which then compounds the problem.”

Daniels said there had been rumors of contamination in the tanks “but that was not the case.”

All of the gasoline terminals were reported back in operation by Friday evening, the port said in a statement.

In addition, the port’s pipelines that move aviation fuel to the Fort Lauderdale airport and Miami International Airport remained open and were unaffected, Daniels said.

The port never technically closed and roadways remained open, although port pilots elected to suspend the movement of vessels in and out of the harbor during the storm. A nine-story harbormaster tower recorded a wind gust of up to 68 mph and wind-driven water did penetrate the huge gantry cranes that move shipping containers in the south port section.

“What we had to deal with was ‘What do we do with the water? Where does the water go?’” he said.

The way ahead

For both transportation hubs, it’s a perennial question with few easy answers.

The port, which is a resident of Fort Lauderdale, Dania Beach and Hollywood, is ensuring that all construction projects adhere to local codes that cover flooring and windstorms, Daniels said.

Port Everglades received a $32 million state resilient infrastructure grant to help replace worn bulkheads on its north end. They are designed to withstand sea level rise of more than 4 feet.

The airport occupies a basin area bordered by Interstate 95 on the west, Interstate 595 on the north, U.S. 1 and the Florida East Coast Railway Line on the east and Griffin Road, a multiple-lane commuter thoroughfare on the south.

As if the tons of water delivered by the massive April 12 rainstorm were not enough, it occurred during a high tide, one airport official said, forcing the massive overflows of retention ponds. The events seemed to justify the summary remark by Broward County Mayor Lamar Fisher, who said “nature was not kind to us.”

Indeed, nature had overwhelmed an airport design that was not quipped to withstand 26 inches of rain in a day when it was designed to deal with up to 17 inches in three days.

“It was a much greater amount of water than it was designed for,“ said Carlos Adorisio, engineering unit manager for Broward County’s Resilient Environmental Department,

Fisher, who toured inundated neighborhoods and relief centers as well as the airport, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Friday that outside consultants are working with the county to help with the damage assessments.

“We are only nine days out from the storm,” he said. “Once we get the assessment done we will have our after-action review.”

It’s also unclear what can be learned from other airports facing flood threats around the nation.

Unlike those in New York and along the California coast, for example, the Broward airport, “can’t flush [flood] waters into the ocean.”

“We might be able to learn from those other airports,” Fisher said. “We are still unique at the end of the day to our specific area.”—

A vulnerable airport

Broward’s international airport, which started out as an airfield in 1929, appears in a variety of national studies conducted over the last decade that place it among the most vulnerable in the nation to flooding due to storms and sea level rise.

A decade ago, a national climate assessment by the multi-agency U.S. Global Change Research Program listed Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood on a list of 12 airports facing flood vulnerability, according to an article published by the nonprofit research organization Climate Central. Another study this year by the Brookings Institution included it on a list of airports not ready for climate change.

In 2014, the airport built an elevated runway on its south side and upgraded its north runway in 2019, a $95 million rehabilitation project that also made it higher.

What other potential measures might be available to airports to deal with mass flooding in the future appears to be undetermined.

Two years ago, the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Department of Transportation started a resiliency study to learn how climate change is threatening the nation’s airports.

“Airports need comprehensive infrastructure plans and guidance from the Office of Airports to address near- and longer-term climate risks,” the FAA said in a note announcing the project. “Existing practices do not adequately account for and prioritize resilience, which is crucial to maintaining community access to safe and efficient air transportation for passengers and cargo.”

The study, which is intended to produce a series of best practices to guide airport managements, is expected to take another three years.

Another study conducted last year by American Airlines placed Miami International Airport, where American maintains a major hub and is the largest tenant, on a list of 12 large airports it serves that are at risk to climate-change related flooding.

In a statement, the airport said it maintains a system for monitoring and dealing with storm waters.

“The storm water management system at MIA has been the focal point of our utilities master planning efforts for the last 30 years.” said spokesman Greg Chin. “State-of-the-art computer modeling, strict guidelines that exceed FAA requirements for frequency and intensity, and a rigorous design review process have resulted in a resilient system that has provided and continues to provide a high level of service.”

In the meantime, the FAA said Friday it is “not aware of any significant federal funding requests for flood mitigation efforts for South Florida airports.”

Gregory Stuart, executive director of the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization, which connects local government with the federal government to fund projects, said his agency is working with the seaport and airport “to find better ways to design storm water systems. We are going to do something.”

The storm, Stuart said, inspired him to intensify his focus on the problem, which came into sharper relief when he and several acquaintances were caught in downtown Fort Lauderdale after the skies opened up. He arrived home at 3:30 the next morning.

“It was sobering,” he said of the experience.