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House backs formation of a National Guard unit in NMI
The House of Representatives strongly supports the establishment of a National Guard unit in the CNMI, one of the last two U.S. territories without a unit. The other is American Samoa.
In a House resolution that passed unanimously on Monday, lawmakers formalized their support for a National Guard unit that would have the “multiple of capabilities necessary to meet the array of traditional, irregular, catastrophic, and disruptive threats to America” and the CNMI.
The resolution comes about two months after Typhoon Soudelor wrecked Saipan’s power and capacity and almost a month after the National Guard Bureau released its report on the feasibility of establishing guard units in American Samoa and the CNMI.
The August report found that the CNMI has the necessary laws required to establish an organized militia, and that the CNMI has 110 U.S. Army Reserve officers that analysis indicates “can support an additional 1-2 sized company elements.”
“It was very timely for us because we had a national disaster,” Rep. Angel Demapan (R-Saipan) said, referring to the NGB report that was a released a few weeks after Soudelor hit on Aug. 2 to 3.
“[The National Guard responds] to non-military duties that involve disaster response recovery, search and rescue, and that’s the element we didn’t have available. That’s a resource we didn’t have available when Soudelor hit. And so now that feasibility study is done, I introduced this resolution to urge the United States government to consider the creation of a National Guard unit in the Commonwealth,” Demapan said.
