VENICE, Fla. (WFLA) — Venice Municipal Airport suffered about $6 million in damages as a result of Hurricane Ian. The wind ripped hangars apart and left some aircrafts damaged.
“It was heartbreaking. We had 64 of 170 or so T-hangars out there that the doors had either blown off or blown in,” said the airport’s director Mark Cervasio.
Eight months later, repairs have yet to take place. Soon, however, that is going to change.
The city’s insurance recovery manager, Synergy recently awarded a more than $5 million contract to repair and rebuild the hangars. All but one structure is covered, according to Cervasio.
The work will take place in phases as soon as permitting is complete.
“One of the things that we told them is we need to keep the work contained. We still have to keep an operating airport going on and operations being conducted in a safe manner, so we can’t have construction activities going all over the airport,” said Cervasio.
Each construction site will be fenced in, phase by phase.
Pilots at the airport vividly remember the rush of emotions coming back to see the widespread devastation.
“It was emotional. A lot of airplanes got destroyed. This is our airport that we are very happy with here. It was just an emotional thing to come back and see all of that, but everyone works together, all of the pilots and the airplane tenants, hangar tenants, that sort of thing. We are moving along now. It has taken a long time, but we are seeing and hoping that by the fall we will have our airport rebuilt again,” said pilot John Moeckel.
Cervasio hopes to see the regions impacted by Ian last year spared this hurricane season.
“We did the recovery of the cleanup so that we could operate, but now we are just getting into the recovery of rebuilding, so fingers crossed and hopefully the good Lord watches out for us,” said Cervasio.