Airmen assigned to the 6th Air Refueling Wing will start returning to MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. this weekend after the base survived Hurricane Milton largely intact. But personnel assigned to the headquarters of U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command, both located at MacDill, may have to wait a while before they can return to their usual offices.
The evacuation order for Airmen put in place ahead of the storm’s arrival ended Oct. 11, but those living on base could not return to their homes earlier than 5 p.m., while those living off base could return to their homes immediately.
Directives issued by 6th Air Refueling Wing commander Col. Ed Szczepanik indicated that personnel assigned to Eglin have until 11:59 p.m. Oct. 12 to come back to base, but a MacDill official said that’s not a hard return deadline. Rather, it designates the point at which reimbursement of evacuation expenses will expire.
As of the afternoon of Oct. 11, power had been restored to more than 80 percent of MacDill’s facilities and all of base housing, spokesperson Capt. Kaitlin Butler said. Obvious signs of damage at the installation include missing roof tiles and shingles, knocked-down road signs, debris, and water intrusion in some base housing caused by storm winds, which exceeded 90 miles per hour and blew in some windows and doors, she said.
For operational security reasons, MacDill will not announce when its KC-135s, which were flown out ahead of the storm, will return to the base. Some evacuated to McConnell Air Force Base, Kan. and some are conducting operational missions.
Both Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. and Moody Air Force Base, Ga. were designated as “staging areas for hurricane relief and support efforts” for those affected by both Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene, Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said at an Oct. 10 press briefing. Helene inflicted major flooding damage across the Southeast before and after its Sept. 26 landfall.
Until the afternoon of Oct. 11, MacDill is in “a mission-essential only status,” according to Szczepanik, who issued alerts and directives via social media and text. He urged returning MacDill personnel to “exercise extreme caution” on returning, “as there may be hazards on roadways.”
The MacDill hurricane recovery team “is hard at work restoring the installation to full operational capability,” he said.
MacDill was expected to endure catastrophic damage from storm surge associated with Milton, which came ashore 60 miles to the south of the base on Oct. 10. However, winds freakishly pulled waters out of Tampa Bay instead of sending a 15-foot storm surge onto the base, which juts out into the body of water. Although there is flooding in low-lying areas due to 13 inches of rain, and wind damage stemming from 90-mile per hour winds hitting the facility, a base spokeswoman reported the base is not severely affected.
In addition to hosting a KC-135 wing, MacDill is the headquarters for U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command. Ryder said that personnel from those organizations “remain evacuated … and will reenter when safe.”
“The priority is the safety of personnel and their families and ensuring they have the resources they need as they recover from Hurricane Milton,” he said. “Both commands continue to operate out of multiple locations, ensuring no degradation to operations.”
The Pentagon is working with “federal, state, and local partners to ensure we are doing everything we can to support and coordinate the ongoing disaster response efforts to aid our fellow Americans impacted by these devastating storms,” Ryder said. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his top civilian and military deputies are receiving daily updates on recovery efforts, he said.
More than 6,500 members of the National Guard—with equipment like large trucks and helicopters—and 250 members of the Army Corps of Engineers, as well as 100 Marines from Camp LeJeune, N.C., have been deployed to assist with recovery operations stemming from both hurricanes, Ryder reported. They have been sent to areas determined by federal authorities working in concert with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.