Not sure about this airport, but in some (most?) places with a tower, there is a very low tech contingency where the airport can operate from a hut on the ground. Everything could be done visually plus a handheld radio and would obviously be slower, but it's there in case the tower had to be evacuated, or similar.
See, for example (there's a picture comment on the question)
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/13438/can-plane...
This makes sense, of course there will be contingency plans, up to and including shutting down the airport and rerouting flights like your sibling mentioned.
> Not sure about this airport, but in some (most?) places with a tower, there is a very low tech contingency where the airport can operate from a hut on the ground. Everything could be done visually plus a handheld radio and would obviously be slower, but it's there in case the tower had to be evacuated, or similar.
I think this highlights my point, since the airport itself is now "unmanned" in the sense that there is no one there to do the "legacy" way of visual controlling. This means that the analog fallback scenario is not an option anymore, which could be of small importance if it was not used a lot anyway before actually falling further back to other options.
When you are on an IFR flight plan and comms fail you stick to your flight plan if still in the clouds and arrive at various point at the time you are expected. Priority during comms failure is landing in good weather if able.
Radar failures happen and there are times when you need to do position reports.
In all seriousness though, ATC can function without vision. Visual checks are a failsafe to their other systems.