From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Natural Disasters: Improving Resiliency at Military
Installations

Description: Natural disasters have caused billions of dollars in damage
to military installations over the past decade. Military installations
we reviewed have taken steps to improve resilience to prevent or
minimize future damages, such as elevating buildings or designing roofs
to withstand high speed winds. 

But DOD's data collection doesn't include all natural disasters, for
example, earthquakes--which makes it harder to track recovery costs and
effects of extreme weather. In some cases, installations hadn't planned
for the data and resources they would need to pursue certain resilience
improvements. 

Our recommendations address these issues.

Related GAO Work: GAO-26-107786, Military Installations: DOD Should
Improve Natural Disaster Cost Tracking and Planning for Resilience
Improvements

Released: February 2026


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[ GAO's Kristy Williams, Director, Defense Capabilities & Management, speaking: ]

Natural disasters can have a significant impact on communities and its
people.

The importance of planning for and responding to these types of events
is no less important for military installations. These installations not
only provide the readiness and the training for our forces, but they
also serve as the workplace and the living quarters for many service
members and their families.


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GAO Report to Congress

Kristy Williams
Director, Defense Capabilities & Management


[ Kristy Williams: ]

The Department of Defense estimates spending $15 billion on recovery
from extreme weather events. Impacts can range from damage to
facilities, transportation networks, communication systems, and can be
widespread or very defined. 

One of the more extreme events that the department has experienced was a
category five hurricane in 2018. Hurricane Michael struck Tyndall Air
Force Base in Florida, causing significant damage to nearly every
facility on the installation. There was also an impact on service
members, about 11,000 of which were displaced, and it caused the
transfer of the mission for the F-22 to be moved to another location. 


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Hurricane Michael, 2018
Tyndall Air Force Base
Panama City, Florida


[ Kristy Williams: ]

So we had two key findings.

The first was that the department doesn't track the full extent of costs
associated with natural disasters. This is because they don't track data
on the full scope of events to include seismic events, and they also
don't have a complete picture of tracking data over time as opposed to
tracking data at a single point in time.


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DOD doesn't track entire data

Not tracking data over time


[ Kristy Williams: ]

We also found that while installations do take steps to include
resilience in their planning, they aren't always able to take these
steps because sometimes data may not be available, and sometimes the
resources needed to fund the improvements aren't available either. 


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Resilience measures not always included in installation planning


[ Kristy Williams: ]

So we made recommendations to address these deficiencies, and today, the
department has taken some steps to begin tracking data and to begin
including resilience into their master planning efforts. However, more
work could be done to make sure a full extent of data is tracked and
that there is guidance directing the military installations on how to
actually use information on recovery in their master plans. 

For more information, please visit GAO.gov. 


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find out more @ GAO.gov

Footage:
DOD
NASA
GAO


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For more info, check out our report GAO-26-107786 at: GAO.gov