I’ve added some new photos of the Corona Airport flood. These are great aerial shots that really show the extent of the damage.
I don’t know who took these pictures. I’ve just been saving copies of anything and everything to my hard drive in an attempt to preserve a record of what’s happened. I know these images are available in other places on the web, but you never know when they’ll be moved or lost. One thing I’m good at is archiving copies, and I’m sure years from now someone will have a hard time believing how much water covered the field. And how fast it all happened.
A quick update on the status of the airport: basically it’s still closed to all air traffic and most all ground vehicles. The longer it stays closed, the worse the financial damage will be to the businesses that call Corona home. There are some plans afoot to seek disaster aid from the state, but politics being what it is, I’d bet that no government agency will provide any relief. Like virtually every general aviation airport, Corona Municipal will be left to sink or swim (literally) on it’s own. Sad. And cynical, I know. But that’s how it is.
In other airport news, it seems that the world’s coolest little airport, Agua Dulce, is going to be shut down to outside traffic permanently. The forward looking citizens of Agua Dulce have seen fit to generate the half dozen or so complaints needed to close a public airport. This despite something like eight thousand letters of support for the field.
The airport owner, Barry Kershner, has sunk several million dollars into improvements at Agua Dulce. A killer pilots lounge & diner, swimming pool, recreation areas, and more. Not to attract jets or big business, but simply to make the airport a safe, friendly and community-centric place that the residents of Agua Dulce could look at with a sense of pride and ownership. But no good deed goes unpunished when you’re a pilot, and they seem to be forcing Barry to protect his investment by agreeing to ban all aircraft not based at Agua Dulce from landing there. The alternative is that they seek to have his operating permit revoked.
If the airport is closed, I hope Barry turns the property into the most garish and obnoxious strip mall ever created. If the residents of Agua Dulce favor a scorched earth policy, then that’s what they should get.
As if the first round of rains weren’t enough, another storm is on the way to Southern California. Normally this wouldn’t be bad news, as Socal seems to be in a perpetual state of drought. But the water from the first series of storm systems has not had a chance to receed.
As of this morning, the water level behind Prado Dam was 494 feet. The end of the runway at Corona is 513 feet, so even the slightest bit of rain could re-flood the airport. The City of Corona said that if it happens, they will close the airport the moment the water touches the runway.
More information is available here.
The Experimental Aircraft Association reported today on the mounting damage totals at Corona Airport.
Tenants and businesses at the Corona (California) Municipal Airport are now four weeks post-flood and while the floodwaters have receded, the west end of the field is still without electrical power, reports EAA member Patrick Brunner.
“Many of the businesses are still not operational, having lost all tools and equipment to the waters and mud left behind,” he said. Total damages to businesses are in excess of $10 million, and there are no SBA loans or federal funding available.
To be honest, I’m surprised the total isn’t higher. Ten million bucks is a pretty small number when you consider what lives at that airport: 414 airplanes, 150 hangars, two dozen businesses, and who knows how many tools, toolboxes, spare parts, and personal belongings.
I love how EAA notes the SBA and federal funds not being available. Does anyone really think there will be any charity from a government entity for those whose livlihoods have been washed away?
The Corona Pilots’ Association is assisting with the recovery effort by providing a disaster relief fund for the businesses. Those wishing to make a tax-deductible donation can do so c/o Corona Pilots’ Association, PO Box 1212, Corona, CA 92878-1212.
As one might expect, hangars have been vacated by some tenants on the west end of the field, including at least one maintenance shop. There are probably others, but I haven’t been spending enough time out at AJO lately to really know.
Despite all the mess, the master leaseholder for my hangar has offered a free month’s rent to everyone on that end of the field. Pretty generous considering what it’s going to cost him to clean the place up. I think he’s trying to hold on to the tenants that are still there, so the credit is a smart PR move even if it temporarily hurts his bottom line.
Over the past few years, I’ve had discussions with various people — many of them pilots — on the subject of airport closures.
I see these closures as the biggest threat to general aviation. Even worse, they’re a sign of an ever more homogenized society in which anyone who has the temerity to want to fly must be either a dangerous lunatic who obviously hasn’t been taxed enough, or — the more understandable of the two possibilities — a terrorist.
A surprising number of my fellow aviators here in Southern California don’t seem to think there’s a problem, despite AOPA’s warning that airports are closing in this country at the rate of one per week. To be sure, some pilots just aren’t married to aviation the way I am, and don’t really care what happens to it. Especially if it happens after their flying days are over. If GA goes away, they’ll take up golf. Or speed walking. No skin off their backs.
But a larger percentage of those who slough off this issue probably just haven’t been around long enough to know just how many airports Orange County has lost. However, thanks to a tip from a fellow pilot, I’ve located a list of the airports that were in Orange County:
- Haster Field, Westminster
- Horse Farm NOLF, Stanton
- Huntington Beach Airport, Huntington Beach
- Meadowlark Airport, Huntington Beach
- Cypress Airfield, Anaheim
- Capistrano Airport, San Juan Capistrano
- El Toro MCAS, El Toro
- Mile Square NOLF, Garden Grove
- Balboa Airport, Newport Beach
- Palisades NOLF, Newport Beach
- Hangar City Airport (later Tustin MCAS)
- Fullerton Airport, Fullerton
- John Wayne Airport, Santa Ana
And here’s the list of airports that are still here:
An impressive list for a county with four million people. Aren’t we proud to be residents of Orange County? Yes, those strip malls and cookie-cutter homes provide a lot more character than this:
Wanna make a bet on how many airports will be in Orange County 20 years from now? I’m betting it’s zero. One, at best.
Fullerton is surrounded on all sides by dense commercial buildings and city streets. It’s only a matter of time until an accident happens, just as they happen on streets and freeways every day. The difference is, when an accident happens on the freeway, they never close the freeway. They just clean up the mess and reopen the highway.
Airports, on the other hand, are bulldozed after a single incident. That’s how Capistrano Airport was closed. And Fullerton just had a TriMotor replica crash outside the airport boundary this past summer. Believe me, it’s days are numbered.
John Wayne is threatened as well. There are extremely wealthy people living in Newport Beach who long ago forced the airport into a tightly structured agreement of limited hours and other restrictions that drive up ticket prices while forcing many airliners to leave the gates with empty seats. The agreement expires in 2020, after which there’s no doubt that the anti-airport forces will attempt to have the field bulldozed.
It’s understandable that urban sprawl will result in a few casualties, but this is ridiculous. Southern California is home to some of the most extensive and important aviation history on earth. But let’s set that aside. Our nation’s infrastructre is at stake. Getting rid of the airports is like getting rid of the roads, or the telephone lines, or the internet backbone. Airplanes are of no use without a place to land.
This phenomenon is not limited to Orange County. Los Angeles County’s finest GA airport, Agua Dulce, is in the process of voluntary closure. You can read the agreement yourself. Oh, it may say that the airport can remain open. But virtually no one will be allowed to land there. And those that are can only fly certain types of planes at very specific hours. No flight training. No transient traffic. No touch and gos. No helicopters. And the list goes on.
With 18,000 airports in the United States, this may not seem like a pressing issue. But the vast majority of those fields are private owned/private use landing strips in remote areas. It’s the general aviation airports in metropolitan areas that we need to preserve. And the time to get serious about it is long since past.
Continuing on the airport closure theme, the Low Pressure System That Will Not Die has brought so much rain to Southern California that it’s shut down a couple of major general aviation airports, possibly for quite some time. To wit:
- Corona Airport is once again under water. They just got done cleaning up the mud, repainting the taxiway and runway markings, fixing the gates, inspecting the buildings, restoring water & power, and reopening the airport to traffic. The estimate is that this time, the flood water will reach as far as the Procraft Maintenance shop. For those that aren’t familiar, that would put approximately half the airport under water. Again.
- The Santa Paula Airport runway has literally been consumed by the Santa Clara River, which has swollen in size to the point where it simply washed away the land that the runway sits on. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few (courtesy of classrides.com):
- According to a Socal RV pilot, Redlands Airport will close on February 28th for extensive runway and taxiway work. She reports being “90+% sure it will reopen. (Can’t say 100% with today’s outlook.)”
- As previously mentioned, Agua Dulce is in the process of being permanently closed to 99.99% of aviators living in Southern California.
- Two of the three runways at Chino Airport are currently closed.
The weather really has been strange. Today, for example, I was scheduled to make an tower enroute IFR flight with a student from John Wayne to Fullerton and back, just enough to shoot the VOR-A and ILS 19R approaches, respectively. After checking the DUAT and rvproject.com weather, and talking to a FSS briefer, it appeared that the weather would be ok. A convective SIGMET existed for the Santa Barbara area, but that cell was moving northward. There was a general instability over the Socal area, but with the flight being so short, I figured there wasn’t much risk.
Of course, about that time, I got down to the airport and talked to a guy who had seen hail falling in Laguna Beach. Bad sign #1. Then my student called and said he was seeing lightning near Fullerton. Very bad sign #2. I put in a call to Flight Service only to be told that a tornado watch had been issued for the Southern California area for 1″ hail and wind gusts to 90 mph. Strike 3, we’re out.
As they say, it “never rains, but it pours”!
