Military:Electrical review turns up 3,700 fires

Electrical review turns up 3,700 fires
The ongoing Central Command review of electrical malfunctions that have killed at least seven troops and a contractor at U.S.-occupied buildings in Iraq has uncovered more than 3,700 fires at those facilities from May 2007 to August 2008.


The total dwarfs the 483 fires at contractor-maintained facilities reported to Congress at a July 30 hearing, which the command’s 15-member Task Force for Safety Actions for Fire and Electricity now says was the five-month figure for one region, not all of Iraq.

But not all of the 3,726 fires reported were a result of electrical malfunctions, the task force says. Only about 820 were definitively characterized as electrical fires, with about 275 of those resulting from “fluorescent light ballast” malfunctions. The causes of the vast majority of the fires were “undetermined.”

On average, 4.2 fires per day have taken place over the past five weeks at U.S. facilities in Iraq, the task force said. These ranged from power strip flare-ups to full-blown fires, Maj. Gen. Tim McHale, who leads the task force, said in a Sept. 15 telephone interview.


Most, but not all, of the 86,000 U.S.-occupied buildings in Iraq are managed by KBR Inc., McHale said. KBR and Army Contracting Command came under fire in that July hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, whose members were particularly incensed over what is now reported as 18 deaths — an increase of two from earlier reports — because of inadvertent electrocutions, most of them involving U.S. troops, recorded in Iraq since 2003.
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