Why Is The Airport Fence Taller Than Fort Sill’s Fence?

Today at lunch, I had one of those human moments where you forget where you're supposed to be going and end up aimlessly driving around. That ever happen to you? I had to drop something off at FedEx down on 11th Street, and for whatever reason, maybe I was too caught up in the conversation with Critter, but I just kept driving down F Avenue past 11th and ended up turning on 17th Street. It was about the time a school bus pulled into the corral down there that he and I both said "Where are we going?" Long story short, we remembered and just decided to keep South on 17th and swoop into FedEx from behind when I realized something odd... The fences around the airport are taller than the fences around Fort Sill... I thought it was curious.

If you didn't already know, airports aren't all public entities. Some are owned by private individuals or corporations. Some are owned by the various governments. Our Lawton Airport is owned by the City of Lawton. It's ironic that the only good piece of pavement in town is the one stretch of road no citizen can drive, but I'm sure that's a topic we can revisit when we hit the CIP & promised new roads 18 month update in a few weeks. The fence and subsequent gates around the airport at enormous. With the barbed wire deterrent at the top, it has to average somewhere between eleven and twelve feet in height. That's higher than the Fort Sill fence along Rogers Lane and out on I-44, why is that?

Don't quote me, I only have as much knowledge on the topic as what my eyes can judge whilst careening down the Rogerbahn on occasion, but the fence encompassing our resident military installation looks like it tops the tape measure around nine-ish feet, and that's only around the areas most people see. For instance, we used to have a transmitter at a tower our on Rogers Lane where it goes back to dirt and gravel, and the fence out there was just four feet of horse fence with an extra strand of barbed wire on top of it. Granted, this was a decade ago, so they might have replaced it over the years... but even back then, it looked both ancient and like they were counting on the honor system to keep people out. Not that there's any reason to cross a fence there... all there seemed to be was dirt roads and really loud explosions. Perhaps that was deterrent enough.

I'm sure I'll get an email from some sort of expert explaining to me why the airport fence is so tall while the Fort Sill fence is so average. I might follow this up and pass that along, if it's interesting enough.