Eppley crews pride in runways

It was the camaraderie of men preparing to go to battle.

As a raging blizzard built outside at Omaha's Eppley Airfield, field maintenance worker Phil Rolf showed off the food that would help sustain him over the next 12 hours — dry Froot Loops cereal and two shots of a liquid energy supplement.

He and other co-workers teased Darris Boone for his sickeningly healthy selections: two golden apples and a banana.

Moments later, when they all headed out to fight the tons of snow trying to clog up Eppley's runways, Rolf broke into song:

“Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. … ''

Despite Eppley's location on the frigid and snowy northern Plains, it has been two decades since it was last shut down because of weather.

This week's monster storm dumped more than 9 inches of snow on the airfield over 31 hours, and blinding winds continued to blow and drift snow for 10 hours after that.

But through it all, more than two-thirds of Eppley's passenger flights came and went Tuesday and Wednesday, and runways remained open for the duration.

“It's not at all unusual for airports in the northern half of the U.S. to close in a blizzard,'' said Bill Shea, a former top airport administrator with the Federal Aviation Administration. “The Omaha airport should really be commended.”

The streak is indeed a point of pride with Eppley officials. It's all hands on deck when storms hit, and the efforts involve much preparation and planning.

But at its heart is the work of some two dozen airport maintenance workers who work around the clock to keep runways, taxiways and aprons clear. They show a real esprit de corps even at the storm's worst, seeming to relish the challenge as they take on the white scourge with a heavyweight fleet of plows, rotary brooms and powerful snow throwers.

“The guys know the importance of the responsibility to keep the airport open,'' said Joe Anderson, a field maintenance supervisor. “There's a lot of pride the guys take in that. It's a big group effort.''

The planning for this week's storm actually began three days before the first snowflake fell.

When weather forecasts made it clear heavy snow was likely, key workers were given advance warning that they would be assigned to one of two 12-hour shifts, providing for 24-hour staffing.

Two Eppley departments in particular work hand in hand throughout such storms: operations, charged with keeping the airport flightworthy and in compliance with all federal regulations; and field maintenance, which maintains buildings, runways and grounds.

As operations manager Tim Schmitt describes the relationship, “We find the problems, and (field maintenance) solves them.''

As the storm approached, Schmitt and others in Eppley's operations center monitored airfield conditions and the planned movement of planes in and out of Omaha, while field maintenance workers fueled up their trucks and other equipment and made sure they were in working order.

The teams decided in advance that through the bulk of the storm they would use a snow plan they call “North 1.'' It would keep open two of the airport's three runways and maintain certain taxiways that planes would use to get to and from the terminal.

When the snow began falling at 9:30 Monday night and quickly turned heavy, Rolf, Boone and the other nine workers on the overnight crew headed out from the sprawling field maintenance garage on the south end of Eppley.

The key to keeping runways open is to stay on top of them from the start. Using a fleet of five specially made brooms that look a little like farm combines, workers moved up and down one runway, sweeping the snow off to the side before it could build up or stick to the pavement.

While the broom crew swept one runway, planes continued to use the other.

When the crew finished sweeping its runway, it would move immediately back to the other, pausing briefly to seek permission from the tower to make the switch.

Trailing the brooms was a truck that would hit speeds of 30 mph and then slam on the brakes. Motion detectors on the truck measured the skid, helping to determine the slickness of the runways.

While the runways were broomed, five plows and a blower worked together to clear the taxiways and apron areas where planes park. Working as teams and driving in an intricate weaving pattern, the plows created 6-foot piles near the pavement's edge.

Then the blower — a vehicle equipped with a snow thrower capable of hurling snow more than 150 feet — tossed it harmlessly into the infield grass.

As the pace of the snow picked up, visibility on the airfield was soon less than a quarter-mile. Over the years, field maintenance crew members have learned to judge a heavy snow by whether they can see the dark bluffs on the Iowa side of the river silhouetted against the sky.

But at that point, even the lights of the general aviation hangars just on the other side of the field were invisible, and ghostly images of planes moved up and down the runways.

By Tuesday morning, Omaha was in the midst of a megastorm.

“The whole central United States is getting hammered,'' Schmitt said as he left the operations center and headed out to the field. Chicago's O'Hare had recently gone into a “ground stop,'' meaning no planes were being allowed to leave.

At Eppley, some airlines canceled flights, but that was their choice. The airfield was still open.

Still, the worst was yet to come. The wind was expected to kick up by the end of the day and blow at more than 25 mph, turning the snowstorm into a full-blown blizzard.

To get ready for that blitz, field maintenance manager Tom Swanek was pitching in to help his crew change a brush head. Its 12-inch stiff wire and poly bristles had worn down to 4-inch stubs.

Swanek, a bear of a man in a brown fleece stocking cap, is Eppley's snow czar. He's the boss of all the electricians, mechanics and drivers who during storms make up the airfield's snow-clearing crew. And in more than three decades at Eppley, there's almost nothing he hasn't seen when it comes to ice and snow.

He had been on duty pretty much since the storm started Monday, and would not go home until long after it had passed. In between, he would snatch sleep in short stretches in a bunk room in the maintenance complex.

“If I go home, I'll have to blow the driveway and the sidewalks,'' he said.

By 5 p.m., the winds came up, hitting 15 mph and building from there. They were at 20 mph by 9 p.m., 25 by 10 and 30 mph by midnight, with one gust registering at 52 mph.

The rising winds and blinding snow were evident in the ratcheting radio chatter.

“Aren't the winds just lovely today?''

“White-out.''

“This is a beast.''

“This is nuts out here.''

“I can't see anything.''

Indeed, at its worst, plow drivers said they could barely see over the hoods of their vehicles and sometimes lost track of where they were on the field. But they reduced their speed and worked right through, taking only a single half-hour break during the 12-hour overnight shift to fuel up and grab a sandwich.

And air operations continued, too. A number of cargo planes and several passenger planes landed during the very height of the storm. Visibility at one point was so low that one passenger plane had to be led to the terminal by a truck from the operations department.

There would be some mechanical casualties during the night. One of the blowers was knocked out for a time after it swallowed one of the heavy rubber wheel chocks that keep airplanes from rolling out of place, and a plow's engine died after becoming clogged with snow.

Near dawn Wednesday as he broomed little drifts forming along the edge of the runway, Anderson saw something he hadn't seen in almost two days: the dark silhouette of the Iowa bluffs.

“That's a good thing,'' he said, a sign the storm had passed.

High winds and drifting continued for hours, but by later in the day, crews turned their attention from maintaining runways and taxiways to digging out other parts of the airfield ignored during the storm.

Bryson Heim's blower hungrily swallowed huge piles of snow along a soon-to-be-reopened taxiway, sending the snow arcing high across the field.

Assessing operations later, Chris Martin, Eppley's director of operations, was pleased.

On Tuesday, airlines still made 55 of 82 scheduled departures. On Wednesday it was 63 of 82, and by Thursday every flight was back on schedule.

Not that there was time for Eppley officials to rest on their laurels.

By Friday afternoon, they were planning for the possibility of freezing rain hitting Eppley this weekend.

Contact the writer:

444-1130, henry.cordes@owh.com

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