Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 19, 1994 TAG: 9401190151
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL STOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Weather-wise, this certainly is a worst-case scenario for us," said Mark Courtney, director of planning and market development at the airport. "I've never seen an ice storm this bad."
The airport closed Monday afternoon and Courtney said the earliest he expects to see any planes leave Roanoke is this afternoon.
That will happen only if the weather warms up or if the airport finds some potassium acetate - a chemical that will melt the ice even with extremely low temperatures.
"The chemicals we normally use just don't work when it's this cold," Courtney said.
Unlike highway crews, airport workers can't use salt to break up the ice because it will corrode the aluminum on the planes.
The potassium acetate is expensive, Courtney said, "but at this point you do whatever it takes, within reason, to get the airport open." Officials were trying to get some potassium acetate shipped in from the airport in Charlotte, N.C.
Courtney said Roanoke airport workers have to think back to 1980 to remember such icy conditions.
The terminal was nearly deserted Tuesday, but the few travelers on hand were unhappy and impatient.
Hope Schumacher, 22, was stranded in Roanoke overnight Monday when her flight to Marco Island, Fla., was canceled. She spent most of Tuesday in the airport, reading and listening to music on her headphones, hoping the temperature would rise so she could meet her college friends for some fun in the sun.
"I'm real disappointed," she said.
After the airport canceled all flights around 3 p.m., Schumacher decided to rent a car and catch a flight out of Greensboro, N.C.
"But I'm not 25, so they wouldn't let me rent a car," she said dejectedly. The student at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania was forced to call her parents in Blacksburg, get a car from home and drive to Washington, D.C., to catch a flight.
The ice also shut down other airports in the Southeast Tuesday, but all except for Roanoke were able to resume some operations by early afternoon.
"I just don't understand why the Lynchburg airport can clear its runways and Roanoke can't," said one irate traveler, who didn't want to be identified.
Courtney said the Lynchburg area didn't receive as much ice as the Roanoke Valley.
Dabney Loving, who drove from Lynchburg to catch a plane to Columbia, Mo., slammed his shoulder bag on a luggage counter when he learned his flight was canceled.
Loving had been scheduled to catch a flight in Lynchburg on Tuesday morning, but that was canceled and airline officials booked him on the Roanoke flight.
"I've been traveling all my life, so I'm used to this, but I just get angry sometimes," he said.
by CNB