As the Hurricane Ride Out team at Moody Air Force Base reviewed their forecasts ahead of Hurricane Helene, a team member came to a shocking realization. As a direct hit seemed more and more certain, the winds the base was likely to face were projected to be so strong that Moody’s emergency operation building was not rated to survive them.
The team needed to evacuate its own emergency center.
“We had to pack up everything and go,” said Major Christopher Valencia, the leader of the ride-out team. “The hardened buildings standards that you see at places like Tyndall are fairly new. Moody was built in the 1940s and a lot of our buildings are pre-1970s. Our facilities are strong but they’re just old.”
The base’s senior commanders and specialists from engineer departments loaded their ring binders, laptops, and sleeping bags and relocated to the base’s newer, sturdier main operations center.
Hours later, with cots spread out across the center, Helene arrived directly overhead just past midnight.
By 4 a.m., the group ventured outside to see the results. Valencia is a career civil engineer and has been among the first sent into other disaster areas with heavy equipment and supplies to begin clean-up and recovery.
“I’ve responded to typhoons, monsoons, and tornadoes,” said Valencia. “This was the only time in my career I had no idea where to start.”
Impact
And as the team came out of its ops center that morning, the storm’s power was clear.
“It pretty much looked like someone dropped a bomb,” said Valencia.
Col. Gary Simone, the base’s acting deputy commander for the storm, has spent 25 years in the Air Force rescue world as a Combat Systems Operator on HC-130s. He’s responded to dozens of natural disasters.
“We have hundreds and hundreds of trees that were knocked over during the storm and 125 different buildings with some sustained damage,” he said. “We had some gas leaks, we had some down high voltage power lines, we had streets that were impassable.”
Moody is one of the smallest Air Force bases in the continental U.S., with just 5,000 active duty airmen and a small grid of buildings and hangars that would fit in a corner of some of the service’s more sprawling installations. The base has long been a hub for the Air Force’s rescue community, with squadrons of rescue-focused HC-130s and HH-60 helicopters, the Air Force’s largest squadron of pararescue specialists, and two squadrons of A-10 attack jets, who often play the role of escort for rescue teams.
Put another way, airmen at Moody are used to being sent into disaster areas after a storm hits, not digging themselves out. But in the wake of Hurricane Helene, Moody was essentially off-line and cut off, with no power or sewers, reduced phone service, and — at least in the opening hours — no open road to or from the base.
Though the storm arrived the night of Thursday, September 26, the base had been bracing all week.
“Monday, we started to see the potential tracks start to solidify in the cone coming over the general area,” Simone said. “We also started to see that it was anticipated to blow up beyond just a tropical storm into maybe a hurricane.”
Facing a direct hit, base officials had just hours to move the base’s planes. Even well-tied down, most airplanes stand almost no chance of surviving major storms if caught on the ground. During 2018’s Hurricane Michael, 17 F-22s at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida were damaged when they were unable to leave the base.
“Tuesday, what kind of came together and evaluated the weather one more time, and obviously there’s a point where you can’t fly them out anymore,” Simone said.
By luck, three HH-60s and two HC-130s were already at Patrick Space Force Base on Florida’s Atlantic coast, where they’d just stood a rescue alert assignment for a SpaceX rocket launch (Air Force rescue troops have been pre-positioned for alerts during every manned space launch since the 1986 Challenger disaster).
On Wednesday, the base sent its remaining 25 flyable planes out of harm’s way including three HC-130s and five HH-60s to Columbus Air Force Base, Mississippi, along with 16 A-10s.
With the planes gone, that left final preparations on base. Engineers checked the working order and topped off fuel levels on the dozen or so emergency generators around key buildings, including the medical clinic, the emergency operations center and even the commissary, which would need the power to keep fresh and frozen food from spoiling.
At 6 p.m. Wednesday night, the base closed to all traffic, with nearly all operations halted. Around the base and Valdosta, troops boarded windows, and put aside water, batteries, and other supplies. Some left town, though authorities did not order an evacuation.
Thursday night, the storm hit. On base, the ride-out team tried to sleep, but mostly couldn’t as the hurricane’s eyewall passed directly over the base.
“It was disturbing to sit there and listen to trees cracking and falling in the middle of the darkness,” said Simone. “I think they clocked [the wind] about 108 miles an hour and down at Valdosta Airport.”
Moody officials weren’t sure how fast the wind was for them.
“Our wind meter actually blew away,” Simone said.
Digging out
With most of the base’s 5,000 airmen either sheltering in their own homes or evacuating only about 500 troops were on base in the days after Helene. The number was split between senior leaders like Valencia and a few hundred “essential personnel” and the 250 junior troops in the base’s barracks.
Power was down on the base and in every neighborhood. The base’s wastewater facility was offline as well. Within the first few hours, the base took full accountability, mostly with phone trees but with “runners” sent to find troops that did not check-in.
Though one airman lived up a driveway so covered in trees it took six hours for him to cut his way to the street, Simone said, “Amazingly, we did not have any injuries.”
In town, 100,000 residents were without power and families began to check on each other.
“We had many families that saw another military member’s home had sustained damage that has just opened their arms and open the doors and invited people into their house,” Simone said. “And helping our deployed spouses, going to make sure that they had water, that they had power, that they were taking care of, just going out and cleaning the debris out of their yards. We have a lot of people that are deployed right now and we wanted them to be able to focus on what they’re doing down range, so we had a lot of people who wanted to make sure those families were taken care of.”
One of the base’s firetrucks joined the local EMS response, responding to calls for help in the early horse. The crew pulled 20 local residents to safety, either from stuck cars, building hazards or other medical emergencies.
On base, Simone said, “Probably a dozen homes sustained significant structural damage with actual trees landing on the homes.”
To open the base’s runway, the 300 junior enlisted troops in the barracks were called out for a general “FOD walk” on the flight line that Friday. That allowed a 30-man “REDHORSE” team from Hurlburt Field, Florida to fly in with heavy equipment. REDHORSE teams — short for Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineers — are a sort of “first-in” construction company that rapidly builds airbases in austere spots in combat zones. Perhaps unsurprisingly, their skills and heavy-duty construction equipment is well-suited for storm recovery.
Using generator power, base officials soon got the Shoppette open, along with the base dining facility and the base gym, where on-base troops could shower, and escape the post-storm heat and humidity with working air conditioning and charge phones.
Administratively, the base also issued a limited evacuation order Friday. Though not mandatory, the order allowed families without power or sewer service or those with medical conditions including pregnancy, to be reimbursed for travel expenses to leave the area. Somewhere between 700 and 1,200 troops left, officials said.
By Oct. 1, power was back on. Two days later, Air Force One touched down on Moody’s runway as President Joe Biden used the base to visit impacted areas around the region.
This week, the base was mostly back to normal, with the base’s aircraft due to return Wednesday.
The storm and recovery, Simone said, matched other Moody experiences in disaster zones.
“Moody was intimately involved in Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Harvey,” said Simone. “With somewhere, in the neighborhood of 6,000 lives saved just between those two events. This was the first time where we were not capable of responding.”