WSJ's Scott McCartney: Disasters Press Airports Into Service

The Wall Street Journal

September 23, 2005

THE MIDDLE SEAT
By SCOTT MCCARTNEY

Disasters Press Airports Into Service

Katrina Turned New Orleans's Armstrong Into a Shelter; Houston Prepares for Rita
September 23, 2005

The international airport in New Orleans never was intended to be a shelter or a hospital or even an evacuation hub for 30,000 people, but it quickly became all of that after Hurricane Katrina. That has led Airport Director Roy Williams to suggest changes are needed in airport terminal design and disaster preparations in many cities. New Orleans found it had few safe terminal areas without glass windows, for example, and lacked generators to provide enough emergency power for the thousands of people who filled its concourses. And in Houston, the airport authority, concerned about a similar influx, is urging people evacuating ahead of Hurricane Rita not to come to the airport without a reservation.

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After Hurricane Katrina, helicopters plucking people off roofs and from hospitals went straight for the airport, as did many residents, since it was at a slightly higher elevation and relatively dry. At one point, the line of people seeking triage medical evaluation in a concourse was 200 people long, Mr. Williams said. Patients were shuttled about on airline baggage carts. The airport didn't have enough power for air conditioning, so temperatures in buildings climbed above 90 degrees -- his office hit 100 degrees, he said.

Armstrong International Airport came through the storm with damage now estimated at $55 million -- light compared to other structures in the city. The roof was damaged, landing lights were broken and there are other structural problems, but a nearby levee that the airport had fortuitously raised this year to 16 feet from about 10 feet held. There were no injuries among the people who rode out the storm at the airport -- mostly stranded passengers, airport employees and their families and some nearby residents seeking shelter.

As the disaster unfolded, the airport's evacuee population grew. A group of 31 visiting doctors and nurses stranded at the airport provided medical care until other doctors and nurses arrived. Local hospitals facing rising floodwaters and a loss of emergency power called, trying to organize airlifts of patients to the airport. About 8,000 people a night were sleeping at the airport in the week after the storm, Mr. Williams said, and more than 5,000 troops camped on the property. The airport's emergency preparations never contemplated so many people living in its terminals.

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Ultimately, 30,000 people were evacuated through the New Orleans airport, which became the fifth busiest airfield in the nation over Labor Day weekend, with thousands of helicopter takeoffs and landings, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The busiest day was Saturday, Sept. 1, when 13,000 people, many of them on stretchers or wheel chairs, were shipped out. All were hand screened for security and their bags hand searched, because the airport still had only limited electrical power. Mr. Williams said 20 of the evacuees died later because they were in such severe condition. Now, the airport's taking on a new role as landlord to a temporary city of manufactured housing being set up on the airport's available flat land.

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• Write to Scott McCartney at middleseat@wsj.com

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