Thousands of US service members are living in barracks that are in “substandard conditions”, including exposed sewage and non-existent heating, as officials raise concerns about potentially serious health and safety risks that could affect military “preparedness,” according to a new government report. published this week by Government Accountability Office. The GAO is a congressional agency that examines how taxpayer dollars are spent and provides Congress and federal agencies with “objective, nonpartisan, fact-based information.”
According to the reportsenior service members at the 10 facilities visited by the GAO said that “poor living conditions contributed to reduced productivity on the job, had negative effects on training, or negatively affected perceptions of militar service”.
In addition, officials at the 10 sample barracks said heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems were “broken, malfunctioning or non-existent,” according to the report titled “Military Barracks: Poor living conditions undermine quality of life and readiness.”
All barracks inspected were located in the US, including four facilities in the Washington, DC area and other facilities in the continental United States, including Fort Carson, Colorado (Army); Joint Base San Antonio, Texas (Air Force); Naval Base Coronado and Naval Base San Diego, California (Navy); and Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego and Camp Pendleton, California (Marine Corps).
Service members in half of the barracks inspected said there were problems with water quality. For example, in a focus group held by the accountability office, service members said the tap water in their barracks was often brown and didn’t seem safe to drink.
In another example, a facility visited by the watchdog had recently closed huts afterwards Legionella bacteriawhich causes potentially fatal Legionnaires’ disease, was found in the building’s plumbing systems. GAO officials also said only shacks with health care patients undergo water testing that could reveal legionella They don’t water test other buildings “because they’re not required to”.
Officials at three of the 10 barracks told the watchdog that “service members are generally responsible for pest control or removing hazardous material from the barracks, such as mold and sewage. A Additionally, facility officials told us that service members are responsible for cleaning up biological waste that may remain in a barracks room after a suicide,” the report said.
As of 2019, about 40 percent of active duty members were satisfied with military housing on base, including barracks, according to a survey cited in the report. The military operates nearly 9,000 barracks worldwide, and last fiscal year nearly 280,000 service members lived in the barracks.
The government office made 31 recommendations to the Defense Department, most of which deal with updating standards and better monitoring facilities. The Department of Defense agreed with 23 of the recommendations and partially agreed with eight, and all recommendations are still open and will be updated as the agency takes actions in response to the recommendations.
Poor and potentially dangerous shack conditions have plagued the military for years.
The the Department of Defense said in a 2022 report that found in 2019 that an estimated 175,000 people at two dozen military sites where their drinking water contained concentrations of what the Environmental Protection Agency calls “.chemicals forever“which exceeded exposure levels recommended by the EPA. The actual number of soldiers and their families who live on bases and were exposed to the toxic chemicals may be more than 640,000, according to the Environmental Working Groupa non-profit healthcare organization.
One of the best-known examples of service members being exposed to chemicals in drinking water occurred US Marine Corps Air Base Lejeune in North Carolina from the fifties to the eighties. Base officials initially denied any water problems, though officials who ran lab tests warned otherwise.
The Department of Health and Human Services estimated that up to a million people may have been exposed to toxic chemicals in the Camp Lejeune water, and lawyers estimated last year that up to half a million claims, as reported. Reuters. Thousands of veterans have said their Veterans Affairs claims about Camp Lejeune were wrongly denied, according to Military.com.
The latest report comes as the military already faces concerns moral, recruitment i “awakened” ideology. get serious safety threats
The Camp Lejeune Claims Centera public interest group that helps veterans and their families get legal and medical help, he says that more than “1,100 individual federal Camp Lejeune lawsuits have been filed, although as of September 2023 none have reached a conclusion. In addition, more than 90,000 administrative claims have been filed.”
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