Sendai and San Juan airports

Sendai and San Juan airports

By Kenneth D. McClintock

By now, every web-connected citizen of the world has seen the TV or YouTube videos of the tsunami flooding Sendai airport in Japan after the worst earthquake in recorded Japanese history. After all, Sendai's runway is barely 3,800 feet from the beach and only 3 meters above sea level.

Perhaps in Puerto Rico we haven't realized that Luis Muñoz Marín's main runway is only 700 feet away from Isla Verde beach, totally unprotected from an Atlantic Ocean tsunami. Worse yet, it is only 2 meters above sea level. The alternate, shorter South runway is 3,700 feet away from the Atlantic Ocean, the same distance that separates Sendai's runway from the beach where their tsunami hit, but only one meter above sea level. Thus, the tsunami water that may flood and disable the main runway would probably drain towards the South runway, disabling them both.

Puerto Rico's alternate 1930's downtown airport, the Fernando Ribas Dominicci Isla Grande Airport, borders San Juan Bay and is 3 meters above sea level. Its short runway can't handle big passenger jet planes but, if not disabled due to protection by its location at the tail end of San Juan Bay, could handle C-130 military cargo planes and other STOL, or short-takeoff-and-landing propeller planes, as well as executive jets in its sole 5,200 foot runway.

In case San Juan 's main international and in-town airports were disabled, what alternatives would exist for emergency airlifts to the United States territory?

The former Roosevelt Roads Naval Station airport in Ceiba is a few hundred feet from the beach on Puerto Rico's east coast and a couple of meters in altitude. The Mercedita Airport in Ponce is over two miles inland from the Caribbean Sea and over 20 feet above sea level and probably safe if a tsunami hit Puerto Rico's south coast. Puerto Rico's best bet would be the former Ramey Strategic Air Command base in Aguadilla. Now known as Rafael Hernández International Airport, while barely 2,000 feet from the beach, it's actually 200 feet above sea level and the most tsunami-proof airport in Puerto Rico, capable of handling the largest passenger and cargo jet planes, but not at the same levels of volume as San Juan's main airport.

As Puerto Rico plans for future natural disasters, the risk of tsunamis disabling its main airports, the product of bad planning in the past, is a major factor that must be addressed.