TAMPA, Fla. — MacDill Air Force Base is back open after a shelter-in-place order shut the base down for three hours earlier on Wednesday.
The closure came after MacDill announced it was under a heightened security posture because of another threat. The situation left many in the Tampa Bay area's veteran community with questions and a bit of a scare.
While traffic started to flow again at MacDill's main gate, Force Protection Control (FPCON) Charlie remains in place.
Vincent Torres, a retired Marine, lives about a football field away from MacDill Air Force Base. He learned of the shelter-in-place order online. For him, FPCON Charlie is second nature and comes with the job.
"It's always on your mind, it is, but again, there's confidence, so I'm not really all that worried," Torres said.
"I bought this house well knowing that I'm smack dab. You know, 100 yards from MacDill. And at first it was, you know, a tiny bit of fear, but then I go, you know, I have full confidence in MacDill," Torres said.
Tampa Bay 28 Reporter Blake Phillips took questions about FPCON and Wednesday's threat to Greg Sanfilippo, who retired from the NYPD counterterrorism unit and is now the vice president of security for Doyle Security Services.
"You expect those protection levels to go up and down based off of the overall threat in the world and then localized threats, right? From a public standpoint, I encourage people to realize that it's a proactive measure. So, you know, to continue the daily, uh, their daily lives, would just be more situationally aware," Sanfilippo said.
Sanfilippo said for the people working on and around the base, it is better to be safe and look out for each other. He added that if you see something, you should say something.
FPCON Charlie is not something MacDill hasn't seen before. Back in 2001, Bradley Stenstrom was called into CENTCOM after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. He says the reaction on Wednesday to a threat was similar to what he saw then.
"As soon as we did get on base and got over to our workstations at CENTCOM, they locked us down because, you know, the security level had changed and we were not given much information about what was going on," Stenstrom said.
Blake asked him whether he remembered how he felt in that moment and whether he was worried that something might happen.
"No, I mean, I worked around some great people, some very well-trained people, very dedicated military personnel, and we would do anything to protect our base and our people. And I don't think that's any different today," Stenstrom said.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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