Hurricane Milton Creates Huge Hole in Roof of Melbourne-Orlando Airport

Hurricane Milton left a trail of destruction through the state of Florida, with reports of damages to homes piling up and more than 2.2 million of these buildings without power. Not even airports were strong enough to hold together during the Category 3 storm, as one airport's giant skylight came down, leaving a gaping hole in the ceiling.
 

Blowing The Roof Off

A reporter at Melbourne-Orlando International Airport captured footage of a skylight crashing to the floor inside the airport's terminal. Brevard County first responders, media journalists, and airport operations crew members were at the airport Wednesday night at 2:00 a.m. while gusts of wind blew a skylight from the ceiling and onto the floor below in the middle of the terminal. This created a huge 40-foot hole in the roof making the airport prone to more damage and water intrusion from Milton. Wind speeds from Milton at the time were logged around 120 miles per hour. The 40-by-30-foot skylight was installed to allow natural light into the building during the daytime. 

Fortunately, no injuries at the airport have been reported as the terminal at the time was off-limits. Sand sculptures and a NASCAR race vehicle were on display in the vicinity, but weren't affected by the fallen skylight.Crew members spent Thursday morning trying to secure the hole.
 

Executive Director of Melbourne-Orlando Airport Greg Donovan shared comments with the media about the hole:

"We had a large section of our skylight, technically called a Kalwall, come down in the center of the terminal. The large section crashed down causing a very big gap, a wide open gap, in our roof. The other fortunate element in this is it's been really dry since that initial wave so we haven't had a lot of water intrusion. The focus right now is mobilizing crews to get up there to patch that up, and to limit the amount of damage and water intrusion into the building."

"We've been up there very briefly just because of the conditions. We need the conditions to calm down a little bit to get that repaired. We're very grateful for our team and how well they responded to this situation. It could have been a lot worse."

Donovan expects the repairs to cost in the "high tens of thousands" range.

The airport reopened Friday morning, albeit over 170 flights have been cancelled, with over 70 more being delayed, according to current data from FlightAware.