Were completely open. We just had an airplane land, Airport Manager Allyn Roe said at 1:30 Tuesday afternoon.
The airport was covered with an average of about seven or eight feet of water during flooding that began Dec. 3 when high water overtopped the north end of the Airport Levee, Roe said. Water reached about 21 inches higher in the airport than in the 1996 flood, according to marks people made on hanger walls after the flood 11 years ago.
Two inches of silty mud covered the entire airport, Roe said. City plows cleared off most of the mud, then tanker trucks and fire trucks, using water provided for free by the city, sprayed down the tarmac for two days to completely clean it off.
The airport was a staging ground for West Lewis County rescue operations the Monday flooding began. Roe recalls that water started rushing toward the airport around 8 p.m. that evening after overtopping the northern portion of the dike surrounding the airport.
The three airport employees and more than a dozen emergency personnel and first responders were trapped in the airport and had to be airlifted out by helicopter. Roe was one of the last to be pulled to safety from the airport office deck at 2 a.m. Tuesday.
The levee was never broken by the flooding itself, but crews on Wednesday and Thursday of last week used heavy equipment to intentionally breach the dike so floodwaters could escape.
On Tuesday, the manmade breach on the southern end of the airport was being repaired, Roe said.
The Chehalis-Centralia Airport Board will gather this evening at 5:30 for their regular meeting in the airport board room. A flood update will be part of the discussion, along with a closed-door executive session to discuss litigation, real estate and personnel.
