42 ENVIRONMENTAL November | December 2026 AirportImprovement.com TPA The location of Tampa International Airport (TPA) is both a blessing and a curse. Being near the upper shore of Tampa Bay provides sought-after views and a convenient location in the middle of the Tampa Bay region. By the same token, though, it also puts the airport at risk for flooding and other damage when extreme weather moves up Florida’s Gulf Coast. When Hurricane Milton hit the Tampa area in 2024, TPA officials were dismayed by how much water breached the airfield. “We saw the bay get to the highest levels we’d seen in quite a long time,” remembers TPA Construction Director Dan Seeley. “Floodwaters approached the west airfield, the section near the bay, and we’d never seen that.” While TPA was anything but flatfooted when Milton hit, having water on the airfield highlighted the region’s severe storms and revved up management’s long-term efforts to adapt to changing climate conditions. Personnel immediately reassessed the vulnerability of crucial airport infrastructure, particularly two airfield electrical vaults beside the Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting Station. Although the vaults have never flooded, waters associated with Hurricane Milton came too close for comfort. For TPA, the major issue was torrential rains—more than 11 inches in just a few hours. The event “opened our eyes to sea level rise, storm surge and that things have changed,” Seeley says. “Older [weather] models didn’t reflect what the environment was doing now.” In the aftermath of any storm, keeping the airfield lights operating is crucial to keeping the airport operating and aiding recovery efforts. Electrical vaults protect the equipment that powers the airfield, therefore TPA officials were intent on protecting them. To do so without adding significant permanent infrastructure, the airport Tampa Int’l Adds Deployable Floodwall to its Storm Prep Options BY SCOTT BERMAN DAN SEELEY FACTS&FIGURES Project: Protecting Airfield Electrical Vaults Strategy: Deployable flood barrier Location: Tampa Int’l Airport, in FL Cost: $1.9 million Funding: Airport capital funds; $55,177 Airport Improvement Program grant Product: Clima Armour FloodWall, from AquaFence Size: 9 ft. tall; 150 panels Construction & Maintenance: H.L. Pruitt Corp. Product Purchased: Aug. 2025 Related Construction: Early Aug. 2026 to early Sept. 2026 Climate Change Resilience Assessment & Modelling: 2019, by RS&H Key Benefits: Protecting key assets that support operational continuity; system can be removed from storage & assembled in hours when major storms are predicted
View this content as a flipbook by clicking here.