Los Alamos - Planes sustain hail damage

The planes sitting out at the airport in the pleasant Los Alamos sunshine may look nice, but looks can be deceiving.

Many are damaged beyond repair due to last week’s hail storm, according to some of their owners. Though the hail last week didn’t shatter any windows or cave in any roofs at the airport, many of the planes’ thin metal surfaces suffered hundreds of dings and divots, making many of the aircraft a risk to fly.

“Every plane was damaged, one way or another,” Los Alamos Airport Manager Peter Soderquist said.

Soderquist said 17 or 18 airplanes were damaged in the storm that was so strong out by the airport, there were particular spots where the hail, measured to be about an inch in diameter that accumulated in two-foot drifts.

“It was pretty intense,” he said.

Dan Gabel, the press secretary for the Los Alamos Civil Air Patrol, estimated his Piper “Cherokee D” airplane sustained at least $18,000 worth of damage during the storm.

“I’m sure it’s going to be more than that because this time, the damage is far worse,” Gabel said, noting Los Alamos endured a similar hail storm about three years ago.

Turns out he was kind of off. Later, when his insurance adjuster came to check out the damage, the estimate came to about $50,000. He believes when all is said and done, he will have to shell out at least $5,000 of his own money to make it right, even though he has insurance. If Gabel’s and some of the other planes can be saved, the aircraft will have to undergo a lengthy and expensive process of repairing the crafts’ “skin.”

“They basically have to replace the aluminum skin on the plane’s wings”, Gabel said of his own plane. “The have to remove the rivets, take off the old skin, put on the new skin, then prime and paint it.”

According to Soderquist, the county has had plans in place for some time to help the pilots out, but for some reason or another, those plans either fell through or just never came to fruition.

At some point, between the last disastrous hail storm of three years ago and this one, the county had several cement foundations laid down into the tarmac in the east quadrant of the airport in preparation for the hangars that would eventually follow.

The foundations, however, were positioned atop a landfill, creating an unstable foundation for the hangars, so the project was abandoned. But Soderquist said at some point, the project will get on track again.

“The land that landfill is on is the only acreage upon which the airport can expand upon and build hangars,” Soderquist said. “We will eventually come to a resolution of the problem, and when we do we will build hangars there.”

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