Go to Front Page  Airport Safer Inside but Not Outside, Critics
Say  By Alice Reid Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, July 25,
1997  The new $450 million terminal at National Airport, which
opens for business Sunday, has been designed with safety in mind
-- from its non-slip terrazzo floors to its 3,200 fire and smoke
alarms. The concrete around the airline gate area slopes away
from the building to keep any jet fuel spills from seeping into
the foundation and creating a fire hazard.  But even after a
decade-long renovation that will cost more than $1 billion in
all, National in many ways will still be the same airport that
critics have derided as potentially unsafe -- with short,
intersecting runways built on a landfill peninsula and
surrounded by water and neighborhoods.  "It has all the problems
of a small, close-in airport -- short runways, intersecting
runways, with hazards at the ends. It has all the same kinds of
problems that it did before" the renovation, said Mary Schiavo,
former inspector general