Kansai

Lessons learned from a typhoon-hit airport

When September’s Typhoon Jebi slammed into Kansai Airport in Osaka Bay with winds of over 200km/h, the realities of climate change hit home as hard as the 2,591-tonne fuel tanker Houn Maru, which broke free from its moorings and collided with the single 3km bridge to the island airport, severing links to the mainland and stranding thousands of passengers who were sheltering in the airport and thousands more staff at work. Power cuts from inundated sea-level electricity facilities and the loss of flooded emergency facilities left the refugees quite literally in the dark.

Kansai Airport’s two linked artificial islands are an engineering marvel, selected as a Monument of the Millennium by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2001 alongside the Panama Canal, Hoover Dam and Empire State Building.