Inside the hurricane that caused $5 billion in damage to one Air Force base

This Air Force base will never be the same.
Scenes from Mexico Beach, taken Nov. 12 – More than 30 days after Hurricane Michael struck, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is working in partnership with the local, state and federal response to Hurricane Michael with 220 Corps employees currently engaged in Florida.

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Editor’s Note: This article is part of War and Climate Week, a series of stories exploring how the U.S. military is coping with extreme weather, sea-level rise, and a warming globe.

When Hurricane Michael struck in October 2018, it wreaked havoc on Florida’s Tyndall Air Force Base. Its 160-mile-per-hour winds hammered everything in its path, and across the 29,000-acre base, hundreds of buildings were damaged or destroyed, costing the service $5 billion in repairs, in addition to disrupting operations. The hurricane is one of the most devastating, and costly, extreme weather events to strike a military installation in recent years. Learn all about it below:

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