Residents return after Michael; Air Force base surveys damage

Amy Hay, an employee of the Driftwood Inn in Mexico Beach, Fla., sifts through debris Wednesday in the wake of Hurricane Michael.
Amy Hay, an employee of the Driftwood Inn in Mexico Beach, Fla., sifts through debris Wednesday in the wake of Hurricane Michael.

MEXICO BEACH, Fla. -- Residents of hard-hit Mexico Beach returned home Wednesday for the first time since Hurricane Michael hit, finding pieces of their lives scattered across the sand and a community altered.

Nancy Register sobbed uncontrollably after finding no trace of the large camper where she'd lived with her husband. She was particularly distraught over the loss of an old, black-and-white photo of her mother, who died of cancer.

Husband Taylor Register said he found nothing but a stool used for cutting his hair, a hose and a keepsake rock that was given to him by a friend 40 years ago.

"That's my belongings," he said, pointing to a small pile beside his red pickup. Choking up, he said: "I appreciate God humbling me. Everybody needs it."

Residents among the community of about 1,200 people who rode out the storm at home have been in Mexico Beach since Michael hit. But officials used the city's Facebook page to tell others to stay away for a week after the Category 4 storm ravaged the beach town with 155 mph winds and a strong storm surge.

State emergency management officials said some 124,500 customers across the panhandle were still without power Wednesday morning and 1,157 remained in shelters.

In Bay County, home to Mexico Beach and Panama City, more than half of the households and businesses remained without electricity. Inland, in Calhoun County, 98 percent of the customers didn't have power Wednesday morning, according to the emergency management website. And in Jackson County, which borders Alabama and Georgia, about 83 percent were without power.

In the meantime, in many areas devastated by the hurricane, law enforcement officials are battling looting of homes and businesses.

Bay County Sheriff's Maj. Jimmy Stanford said deputies have arrested about 10 looters each night since the storm hit. In some parts of the county, residents have spray-painted signs warning that "looters will be shot."

Panama City resident Wes Allen said looters have been a constant problem at the badly damaged motel where he is staying with his wife and three children. Residents have formed a nighttime patrol to keep an eye out for thieves.

"We've got looters breaking in and stealing whatever they can," he said. Allen said he hasn't reported the thefts to police because authorities seem so busy with other things.

Often the looters have been armed, Stanford said.

"Most of our officers lost their homes, have been working 16- to 18-hour shifts with no sleep, no shower, and now they're encountering armed individuals," he said.

On Tuesday, military officials said that Michael's surge across Tyndall Air Force base wreaked enough devastation that the service is considering transferring away some airmen and families until the base is rebuilt.

Tyndall suffered a direct hit from the storm, prompting fears that jets that the service could not fly away in advance were destroyed. On Wednesday, the Air Force began allowing families to visit their homes to collect valuables and take photographs, but it is expected to take years for the base to fully recover.

Brig. Gen. John Allen Jr., the service's director of civil engineers, compared the storm's destruction to what Hurricane Katrina caused in 2005 when it ravaged Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss. In that case, the base took nearly five years to make a full recovery.

Florida's U.S. senators, Marco Rubio, a Republican, and Bill Nelson, a Democrat, along with Republican Rep. Neal Dunn, in letters to President Donald Trump and the Defense Department, have urged the administration to affirm their commitment to rebuilding the Tyndall base and expedite the repair work there.

Airmen and their families are displaced all over the region, with most still on the panhandle while staying in hotels, with friends or in shelters. Nearby military installations, including Eglin Air Force Base and Hurlburt Field, are assisting some of them.

"We're going to have to make some serious decisions on which families come back to that base or not," said Brig. Gen. Edward Thomas, who visited the base Sunday.

Numerous F-22 Raptors, worth more than $140 million each, are still in hangars that were either damaged or destroyed in the storm, Thomas said. The Air Force flew as many planes out of the path of the storm as it could, but a number of them were left behind because they were undergoing maintenance or awaiting new parts. Service officials have declined to say how many were damaged.

Information for this article was contributed by Jay Reeves, Brendan Farrington and Freida Frisaro of The Associated Press; and by Dan Lamothe of The Washington Post.

A Section on 10/18/2018

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