Army-wide barracks inspection ordered
By Matthew Cox - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Apr 29, 2008 18:26:05 EDT
The Army’s senior leadership recently ordered a service-wide barracks inspection to make sure its billets are in better shape than the dilapidated quarters 82nd Airborne Division soldiers just came home to from Afghanistan, Army installation heads said today.
The impromptu walk-through carried out by all major commands occurred this past weekend in response to a video posted recently on YouTube that shows peeling paint, mold and a bathroom drain plugged with what appears to be sewage in the barracks that paratroopers from the Fort Bragg, N.C., unit were housed in after returning from a 15-month combat deployment.
“Folks, we let our soldiers down; that is not like us,” Brig. Gen. Dennis Rogers, the deputy director of Operations & Facilities of Army Installation Command, told reporters. “There is no good excuse for what happened.”
While the walk-through is not yet complete, Rogers said that garrison commanders have reported so far that “soldiers are being housed to the Army’s standard,” but stopped short of describing the poor barracks conditions some soldiers are living in at Fort Bragg as an isolated incident.
“I would hope that it is an isolated condition, and we will figure that out,” Rogers said. “If there are issues; we’ll fix them. That’s what we are going to do, we are going to fix them,” Rogers said. “We are still going through the data, and we will know by the end of the week.”
In addition to the walk-through, Army installation officials have stood up a Senior Non- Commissioned Officer Facilities Forum to make an assessment of Army barracks conditions. The forum, which will meet monthly, will be chaired by Command Sgt. Major Debra Strickland of Installation Management Command. It will inspect barracks and make recommendations for correcting current and future upkeep problems.
The video, shot by the father of Sgt. Jeff Frawley on April 14, caught the attention of Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., on April 25. She said she contacted the Army secretary after learning of the barracks’ condition.
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/04/army_barracks_roundtable_042908w/
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