{"id":30363,"date":"2018-10-17T19:56:52","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T19:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/uncategorized\/2018\/10\/17\/as-tyndall-begins-recovery-a-hard-road-and-hard-questions-lie-ahead\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T20:54:04","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T20:54:04","slug":"as-tyndall-begins-recovery-a-hard-road-and-hard-questions-lie-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/news\/your-air-force\/2018\/10\/17\/as-tyndall-begins-recovery-a-hard-road-and-hard-questions-lie-ahead\/","title":{"rendered":"As Tyndall begins recovery, a hard road \u2014 and hard questions \u2014 lie ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As Tyndall Air Force Base<\/a> begins recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Michael<\/a>, it faces some hard questions about what the future will hold for the airmen, civilians and their families who were forced to evacuate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a Tuesday briefing with reporters at the Pentagon, Air Force officials stressed that recovering from the worst hurricane to hit a base in years<\/a>, if not decades, will be a long, difficult process. While things are \u201cexponentially\u201d improved at Tyndall over the last few days, and some missions could be back up and running in a matter of months, they said it will likely be years before the Florida base will be back to where it was before the Category 4 storm landed its direct hit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brig. Gen. John Allen, the Air Force\u2019s director of civil engineers, compared the damage to that wrought by Hurricane Katrina on Mississippi\u2019s Keesler Air Force Base in 2005. Some of Keesler\u2019s training missions were back up and running in six months to a year, he said, but a complete recovery took almost five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been through a hurricane and a hurricane recovery before, but not on the magnitude of this,\u201d Allen said. \u201cYou can imagine what kind of an effort lays ahead of us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most pressing questions is how to take care of the 11,000 Tyndall personnel and families who evacuated. Most of them are in the north Florida area, but some have relocated further within the continental United States \u2014 and it\u2019s still unclear when they might be able to start returning home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to make some serious decisions on which families come back to that base or not,” said Air Force spokesman Brig. Gen. Ed Thomas. “There will be families that will be displaced from the base until we make a decision on where they\u2019re going to PCS to, who will come back to the base. And then they will have their household goods picked up from Tyndall and moved to another location.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Air Force took the first steps Wednesday, when it started opening up five-hour windows to allow evacuees to return to their homes, assess the damage, and take out valuables or other household goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Sonia and Zoe Reeves react to the damage to their home on Oct. 17, 2018 at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, after Hurricane Michael stuck the base one week ago. Support personnel from Tyndall and other bases were on location to support Airmen returning to their homes to assess damage and collect personal belongings. (Kelly Walker\/Air Force)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But Air Force Personnel Center commander Maj. Gen. Andrew Toth said that not much is known yet about what missions will be able to return to Tyndall \u2014 and whether some evacuees will need to be permanently moved to another installation because their jobs aren\u2019t coming back to the base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s [part of] the determination, of where we are at in the recovery [and] what the capabilities are going to be for Tyndall in the future,\u201d Toth said. \u201cNone of that has been concluded or determined yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t