During Hurricane Ian in September 2022, stormwater from Naples Bay and the Gordon River flooded the Naples Airport airfield, drowning runway signage under wind-blown waves.

Worse, the stormwater also came within inches of reaching the airport’s airfield lighting vault that operates runway, taxiway and approach lights.

Justin Lobb, deputy director of aviation, told the Naples Airport Authority board on March 20 that had the water reached the vault, the airport could have lost its night operations. The loss of nighttime flights would have reduced the airport’s ability to provide post-storm recovery support for the city and surrounding area.

“The flood came within inches of flooding during Ian,” Lobb told the commissioners. “Had that facility received water, we would have been talking about a very extended outage … for the nighttime operations with all the critical equipment inside that facility.”

To prevent such an occurrence in the future, NAA plans to spend at least $5.5 million constructing a new lighting vault that will sit 5 feet higher than the present building, Lobb said. It’s part of a larger project to mitigate damage to airfield lighting systems during storm surge and other flooding.

The new building will be wind-rated and have redundant emergency backup and other storm resiliency features, Lobb told commissioners. The project is already out to bid and is “rated very highly” for $2.7 million in state grants from the Legislature, Lobb said.

The airport also will soon launch a $16.6 million, 18-month construction project to improve airfield lighting infrastructure to prevent outages of runway, taxiway and other airfield lights. The project includes improved construction methods, such as water-resistant lighting connections, the installation of drains and sump pumps and instituting other water resistant features.

It is a “broader project of the whole field lighting system that will have a number of resilient components incorporated within to help the airfield bounce back from flooding events,” he said. “We know we can’t prevent it, but there are a number of construction methods that will allow that system to bounce back a little bit quicker.”

Airfield lighting construction bids went out in January and were expected to close before the end of March, Lobb said.

The airport also is improving resiliency in its fuel farm by elevating all of the pumps and critical electrical equipment above the flood zone. The site is vital to ensuring a reliable supply of fuel for tenants and visiting aircraft.

“Some of it did flood in the hurricane, and a number of critical equipment did get very close,” he said. “It could have had a much different impact if that equipment had been completely flooded.”

The airport could purchase easily deployed flood barriers – such as quick dam flood barriers, inflatable barriers and other devices the airport can put around sites when there is a storm surge prediction.

During the November 2024 regular meeting, commissioners asked Lobb for a comprehensive report on the NAA’s resiliency initiatives over the past several years.

“Irma was very much a wind-related event,” Lobb told the board March 20, regarding the 2017 hurricane. “Ian (2022) was much more about water and surge.” Both storms provided the airport “many lessons learned,” he said.

NAA has taken many steps to protect the airport’s facilities and infrastructure since 2012, Lobb said. A partial list includes creating a master drainage plan, creating a stormwater collection pond near Taxiway A, and improved drainage on Runway 14-32.

During Ian, however, Runway 5-23 was hidden under white caps blowing over the airfield even as the NAA was in the process of improving drainage on that area of the airfield.

The airport also installed standby generators at all critical facilities, including the general aviation terminal, the North Road Terminal, the air traffic control tower, the fuel farm, airfield lighting facility and the facilities maintenance building. The airport also elevated critical equipment that operates entrance and exit gates to the airport,  gates often used by emergency and mutual aid resources to access the airport.

The airport also put critical IT network equipment on backup battery supply to bridge the 15-30 seconds it takes for generators to kick in. It also hooked up the airport’s systems to a primary fiber network and a secondary fiber network for redundancy.

“In the last year or two, we’ve instituted a tertiary, Starlink, Internet service backup in the event of a complete failure,” Lobb said.

Meanwhile, the airport knows it can’t prevent storm surge. It can only find ways to reduce its effects on its operations.

“Stormwater mitigation helps the airport not just during hurricane events,” Lobb said, “but during extreme rain events, typical summer thunderstorms. Typical drainage improvements allow us to evacuate that water more quickly.”

Chris Rozansky, Naples Airport executive director, said airport officials at one point briefly considered raising the entire airport 1 to 2 feet, but that was considered impractical.

“The things we are already doing are short-term,” he said. “Long-term planning would require much more depth.”

This story was published in The Naples Press on April 18.