suspicious package<\/a> was found on base, the FBI said late Wednesday had \u201cpossible energetic materials.\u201d<\/p>\nAt MacDill, home to CENTCOM, the military command in charge of the war with Iran, threats mean long lines and errands unfinished for the thousands of servicemen and women and their families who pass through every day.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were in the car for almost four hours waiting because they wouldn’t let us go anywhere,\u201d one service member said.<\/p>\n
Suzy Malloy is the spouse of a retired Navy captain and executive director of Blue Star Families at MacDill, organizing events and programs to help military families on base.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur families here at MacDill Air Force Base have been under some stress for more than just this week,\u201d she said. \u201cThis week just brought it a little bit closer to home.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Malloy said stress has been high since the beginning of the conflict with Iran, including with some local service members already deployed.<\/p>\n
adding that there\u2019s been “stress from the beginning of the conflict with Iran and plus some days leading up to it as our service members locally, some of them have deployed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her husband, now in the private sector, was on base when the shelter-in-place order came down.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just didn’t leave his office and continued to work,\u201d she adds. \u201cHowever, there were many families that were stuck either trying to get onto base or to get off of base.\u201d<\/p>\n
She says some events in the near future are cancelled to free up security and support services as the base remains on its second-highest threat level, FPCON Charlie, which means there\u2019s an imminent threat, but not an attack, for the base.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things all of us can do is do your part, check on your military neighbor,\u201d she said. \u201cBring them a meal. Tell them you appreciate them. Those are the little things that go a long way in times like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
MacDill isn’t the only military base in America on alert. Fort Dix in New Jersey went on lockdown this week for a suspicious package that later turned out not to be a threat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The recent threats have led to long lines and errands unfinished for the thousands of servicemen and women…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-197638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}