Harlingen airport’s main runway closed; officials review flood damages

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HARLINGEN — Valley International Airport’s operating with two runways while it’s main $32 million landing strip remains closed as officials assess the pavement’s condition.

The airport opened Saturday after shutting down Thursday night as floodwaters rose, Marv Esterly, the airport’s aviation director, said Tuesday.

“That’s our main runway so we’re treating it with kid gloves,” he said, referring to the landing strip that became the longest south of Austin after opening last year. “We’re taking core samples to make sure everything is great.”

Across the airport, officials are assessing damages after the storm flooded much of the area.

“That was a huge deal that I hope we don’t see again in our lifetime,” Esterly said. “We’re doing assessment on the pavement. We don’t know if there’s underlying damage that could cause the pavement to fail in the future.”

Crews have been repairing damages after floodwaters rushed into some buildings during Thursday night’s storm.

“The drainage system is second to none but we’ve got to drain into the arroyo and it got so high it started backing up,” Esterly said, referring to the Arroyo Colorado, which crested at a record 30 feet on Friday morning.

“The whole runway was under water,” he said. “We had signage under water — that caused circuits to blow. The traffic control circuits were affected. Lights along the runway had to repaired. The pavement was saturated. It’s very thick asphalt. It was unstable to get aircraft on it.”

While floodwaters rose a foot inside the airport’s central utility plant, crews were cleaning out the federal inspection station, where the storm rushed about a half-foot of water, he said.

Across town, hundreds of residents are cleaning up flooded homes following the historic storm dumping about a year’s worth rain over a two-day period across the hardest-hit city in the Rio Grande Valley.

The storm, dumping about 22 inches of rain from about Wednesday to Thursday, pummeled the city Thursday night with about 10 inches of rain, flooding much of Harlingen while impacting about 1,000 homes and businesses, City Manager Gabriel Gonzalez said.

“That’s water in the yard or even in the homes or businesses,” he said as officials continued assessing damages.

On Monday, city crews stopped pumping out floodwaters at the Westgate subdivision south of Ed Carey Drive and Hick Hill Street off Bass Boulevard, Assistant City Manager Oscar Garcia said.

The storm, which broke records dating back more than 100 years, spurred floodwaters rushing more than two feet high across many city streets after the Arroyo Colorado crested at a record 30 feet at 6:44 a.m. Friday.

“There’s no drainage system in the country that could handle this event,” Rolando Vela, Cameron County Drainage District No. 5’s general manager, said. “What you experienced, in effect, was a 500- to 1,000-year storm. There’s a one in 1,000 chance of an event like this occurring.”

On the city’s north side, floodwaters filled the new $550,000 14-acre Lozano detention pond, nearing completion, with depths of three to seven feet.

“It helped a lot with the subdivisions there,” Garcia said. “For the last two-and-a-half years, we haven’t stopped with drainage projects. All the improvements have helped, but we’re playing catch-up because for years nothing was done.”

The city’s hardest-hit areas included Secluded Acres and Spanish Acres, both north near Loop 499; the Westgate subdivision south of Ed Carey Drive and the Hickory Hill subdivision north of Bass Boulevard, he said.

Now, officials are completing a drainage study launched last year.