Natural disasters pose growing burden on National Guard

“The effects of climate change are destroying military infrastructure – Secretary Hegseth should take this threat seriously,” Warren said in an email to ICN. “This data shows how costly this threat already is for the National Guard to respond to natural disasters. Failure to act will only cause these costs to skyrocket.”
Neither the Defense Department nor the White House immediately responded to a request for comment.
Last week, Hegseth reiterated his promise to erase climate change from the military agenda. “No more climate change worship,” Hegseth urged, before an audience of senior officials he convened at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, on October 1. “No more division, distraction or gender illusions. No more debris,” he said. Departing from the text prepared and published by the Pentagon, he added: “As I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, we’re done with this shit.”
Credit: Paul Horn/Inside Climate News
But data released by the Pentagon suggests that the impacts of climate change are shaping the military’s tasks, even as the department stops recognizing science or planning for a warming future. By 2024, the number of National Guard paid duty days responding to disasters — 445,306 — had nearly tripled from nine years earlier, with significant fluctuations in between. (The Pentagon provided the figures in terms of “man days,” or paid service days in addition to the annual training days required by reservists.)
The demand for deploying reservists for disaster assistance during those years peaked at 1.25 million days of service in 2017, when Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria wreaked havoc in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico.
The largest deployment of National Guard members in response to wildfires in the past decade occurred in 2023, when wind-driven wildfires ravaged Maui, killing more than 100 people. Called to action by Governor Josh Green, the Hawaii National Guard conducted aerial water drops aboard CH-47 Chinook helicopters. In the field, they helped escort fleeing residents, assisted with search and recovery, distributed drinking water and performed other tasks.