Originally Posted by HSVTSO Dean

"Ugh."

That is the only thing I have to say today. I am bushed.

So this nice big line of thunderstorms decide to rip through the south today. One of them lands a big ol' squawk of hail and lightning and horrendous wind right on top of Huntsville International Airport.

Shortly after the x-ray machines and the WTMDs go down, the public safety guys (i.e.; the APo) make the decision to evacuate the concourse. They shanghai a couple of the TSOs to help move the passengers in the checkpoint at that moment in time down to the tornado shelter, and the rest of us hike out to another tornado shelter.

Ten minutes later, they give us the all-clear (a tornado was not, in fact, about to demolish the airport~) and we go back to the checkpoint. On the other side of the still-closed-and-locked gate are about 300 passengers wanting to get back into the sterile area.

Oh, my gawd.

Huntsville is a fairly small airport insofar as things go. Whereas an airport like LaGuardia might have three thousand people in line at any given time, they also have, like, a thousand screening lanes. We have two.

After four TSOs were yanked up from baggage screening (we're all dual-function screeners in HSV) to help, it took about twenty minutes to screen everyone back into the sterile area. It was a hard, butt-busting twenty minutes, though.

Ugh. Time to get the wife to rub my poor, aching feet~