Springfield-Branson National Airport (SGF) is still seeing the impacts from April’s hailstorm as visitors report glass shards from damaged cars scattered throughout the parking lots.
For those amongst us who might not be men, defined:
Toughened glass is processed by controlled thermal or chemical treatments to increase its strength compared with normal glass. Tempering, by design, creates balanced internal stresses which causes the glass sheet, when broken, to crumble into small granular chunks of similar size and shape instead of splintering into random, jagged shards. The granular chunks are less likely to cause injury.
As a result of its safety and strength, tempered glass is used in a variety of demanding applications, including passenger vehicle windows, shower doors, architectural glass doors and tables, refrigerator trays, as a component of bulletproof glass, for diving masks, and various types of plates and cookware. In the United States, federal law since 1977 has required safety glass located within doors and tub and shower enclosures.
Yeah, it would be unaesthetic to have glass from those storms still present, but it’s not likely to be sharp, at least not the glass from broken windows from the storm–although broken vodka bottles are a different story. However, the airport would have to shut down the parking lot and clear it out to completely clean the parking lots as they have overlapping vehicle stays of sometimes days or weeks. AND they just had a rolling shutdown recently for resurfacing the lots last year. AND they just tore up and replaced all the flooring on the interior. So perhaps they’re sending people out on a rolling basis with a broom and dustpan who hasn’t gotten it all yet.
Hopefully, the glass the complainant saw was from those storms and not from later theft from parked cars which would be even more depressing.
