Seattle’s Air Traffic Controllers Wing It--Atop a Shipping Container

SEA TAC, Wash. —  The day a magnitude 6.8 earthquake hit, there were eight passenger jets on approach to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, two of them just above the runways. As far as air traffic controller Brian Schimpf could tell, the control tower was coming apart.

Ceiling tiles were tumbling down on his head. Plate glass windows shattered. Radar monitors crashed to the floor. Schimpf dived for cover under a console and keyed his mike.

“Attention all aircraft in Seattle,” he said. “We have a huge earthquake going on. The tower is collapsing. I say again: The tower is falling apart. Hang on, everybody.”

While the Seattle area sustained $2 billion in damage in the Feb. 28 earthquake, much of it was relatively minor. Not so the control tower at Sea-Tac, where substantial damage rendered one of the nation’s busiest airports without a usable control tower.

Three weeks after the quake, 600 arrivals a day are being directed from a small, makeshift trailer, lodged on top of a shipping container, at the airport’s far end.

Federal Aviation Administration officials say the temblor provided the first big test of the FAA’s emergency preparedness in the event of a major earthquake.

In an unusual story that saw air traffic controllers at one point holding walkie-talkies alongside a runway, the FAA says it was able to construct a fully operational control tower within a day of the earthquake. That minimized disruption and left passenger jetliners with only a few moments of hair-raising uncertainty.

“Normally, when we set one of these portable units up, we spend months. We transition into it in a calm, genteel manner,” said Curt Howe, lead engineer on the project. “This was a fire drill.”

FAA engineers bypassed normal procedures and raced to prepare a site, haul a mobile control tower unit under police escort up Interstate 5, put in new electrical, telephone and fiber-optic lines, and install two major radar systems and 16 radio transceivers. This, while thousands of stranded passengers filled the terminal and the nation’s 16th-busiest airport--with more takeoffs and landings than John F. Kennedy International Airport or La Guardia Airport in New York--limped along at half capacity.

“We got to the site [with the new portable unit], and a security guard demanded IDs for all of us,” Howe recalls. “I said the airlines are losing $42 million an hour--let us in.”

The trouble started at 10:54 a.m., just as an Asiana Airlines 747 was touching down on Sea-Tac’s 16-Right runway and an Alaska Airlines MD-80 was ready to take off on 16-Left. A Horizon Air Dash-8 was behind the MD-80. “All right, we’ve got an earthquake. Everybody hold on, folks,” Schimpf broadcast.

The pilot of a Delta Air Lines 767 jetliner, three miles out from touchdown, was having no part of it. “He basically said, ‘I’m outta here,’ ” Schimpf recalls. As the 767’s pilot applied power to execute a missed approach and headed for Portland, Ore., Schimpf still had another MD-80 about eight miles out and four additional planes headed toward the airport.

And then the shaking really started: The sideways S-waves that, for those who were suspended in a glass-windowed tower nine stories high, felt like doom.

“About 20 seconds into it, I see the two glass panes in front of me go,” Schimpf said. “We’re going back and forth and stuff starts

coming off the counter. . . . I’m thinking, ‘This is it, baby, you’re gonna die.’ ”

Schimpf broadcast his warning as he dived for cover, and five other controllers took shelter under consoles and in doorways. “I’m holding on to the mike, and the 767’s out there on thrust reverser and the MD-80 just landed, the [window] shades are flapping, and I’m just waiting for a ride down.”

Then it stopped. Controllers started getting out from under things. What they saw was a control tower left a shambles--”It’s like a war zone in there,” Schimpf said--and Schimpf’s supervisor was ordering the crew to evacuate.

Instead, Schimpf picked up his mike again and started looking for the Dash-8 and the second MD-80, still on approach.

“All right. I want everybody to pay attention here, because I don’t know what’s working and what’s not,” he radioed.

The MD-80 was only a few miles out. Schimpf asked the Horizon Dash-8 to go around for another approach, and he had the MD-80 do a low-altitude turn while a ground inspection vehicle, racing down the runways completed an inspection of the pavement.

At about this point, Schimpf’s supervisor was giving him a direct order to leave the tower.

“There was no way I was going to leave,” he said. “I’m thinking, ‘I’ve got these puppies pointed right at each other. . . .’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t.’ They said later they wanted to come over and unplug me, but they couldn’t get to me--there was too much debris.”

The MD-80 radioed in that it had the Dash-8 in sight, and Schimpf cleared both aircraft to land. He broadcast an announcement that the tower was being evacuated. “Land at your own risk,” he said.

As all flights diverted to Portland; Boise, Idaho; Salt Lake City; and Everett, Wash.; the FAA controllers set up shop alongside a runway, standing on tables with hand-held radios. Schimpf got his first call there 36 minutes after the quake.

“This is American 1856,” it said. “We pushed off [after the quake] and we’re ready to go.” Fifteen minutes later, the American Airlines jetliner was cleared for takeoff.

Then it was the FAA engineers who took the lead, setting up the FAA’s national emergency FM radio system and preparing to move in a portable control tower that was stored in Auburn, several miles away.

The portable tower--essentially a travel trailer with electronic equipment--had been used previously to direct air traffic at forest fires and to relieve regular towers during major remodeling projects. It had never been used at a major airport during an emergency.

The trailer had arrived at Sea-Tac by 3 p.m., and an army of technicians stringing cable and installing radios had it operational by 8:30 p.m.

The problem was that the trailer was so low that the controllers couldn’t see all the runways. So, in a monumental effort, engineers prepared an alternate, elevated site, cutting down large trees and hauling in 1,300 tons of fill dirt. They brought in a large shipping container and, using a 75-ton crane, hoisted the portable unit up on top.

By 7:30 a.m. Saturday, the new tower was operational, and Sea-Tac was operating at 85% efficiency by 11:30 a.m. Operations have since risen to 95%. FAA officials estimate that it will take until May 5 to complete $2.6 million in repairs to the old tower, with a new $19.6-million tower scheduled for completion in 2004.

“I would never, in my wildest dreams, think these people could do what they did as quickly as they did,” said Don Schmeichel, one of the FAA’s supervising engineers. “In fact, I would have bet a lot of money against it.”