JB San Antonio reports Legionella in barracks, moves patients
The virus that causes Legionnaire’s has been found in a barracks on Joint Base San Antonio, in Texas. The post announced they are moving about 150 patients from the base’s Liberty Barracks after legionella was discovered in the water system.
The service members at Liberty Barracks are all temporary residents undergoing treatment at Brooke Army Medical Center. Each service member is being moved to different dorms and barracks based on their individual needs. Meanwhile, Liberty Barracks will undergo a process called “super-chlorination,” according to the statement.
After 72 hours, the water will be tested again to look for legionella or residual chlorine in the plumbing system. There have been no known cases of Legionnaire’s Disease or other legionella-based infections among residents or staff at Liberty Barracks, according to the statement.
Just last year, Liberty Barracks, which houses wounded and injured service members as they receive treatment, was evacuated due to legionella found in the plumbing. The building has gone through the process of super-chlorination and regular testing since then.
This is sort of a good-news/bad-news thing: the barracks are designed to hold up to 360 and is largely empty, but the bad news is that with so many empty rooms, water can sit stagnant in the plumbing and nasties can grow in it.
Kind of surprising to me that there isn’t a protocol to PMCS the plumbing system – might waste some water in the process by flushing every toilet and running every faucet daily, but you would think that would be better than this mess. It does seem to be a pattern, though, that military barracks and quarters all over the country seem to have more than their share of mold, diseases, and shoddy maintenance. Almost as if subcontracting their maintenance to civilian contractors might be a bad thing?
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Air Force, Government Incompetence
At least they’re not making Troops continue to live in black mold-infested barracks while half-assing relocation efforts – *COUGH*.
Is there a trend? A Manhattan nursing home had four die of legionella. Four dead in Argentina and an outbreak in Uruguay. All in the past month.
Can’t understand why the military is having trouble meeting recruiting goals when they have good news like this. Between being poisoned by the water at Camp Lejeune, mold infested barracks throughout the military, Gulf War Syndrome and now Legionares Disease, who wouldn’t want to enlist?
You forgot the mandatory Anthrax shots and the Wuhan Flu shots.
What doesn’t kill you will get you a 15% disability rating from the VA in 30 or 40 years.
And they wonder why recruiting commands across the services are missing recruiting goals for the year? When an all volunteer force gets treated like 2nd class citizens at best, and and afterthought at WORST (Nimitz with the JP-5 in the water pipes, I’m looking at YOU)….no shit no one is willing to subject themselves to a term of service.
Can you imagine the outrage if “undocumented immigrants” were placed in facilities that junior enlisted have to survive in?
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Oh for Pete’s sake. What a bunch of snowflakes. God forbid we should ever get into a war where our hardcore troops may have to do without AC or a Mocha Latte to start their day. Eeew! Funny tasting water! Icky! I wanna see the IG! My recruiter promised me a Rose Garden!
Hey, Shit happens, life can be a bitch.
Ol’ Poe has a way to prioritize the rehabbing of all these contaminated barracks:
Point out to VP Klamydia Harris that these facilities are frequently used to house Persons of Color… 🙄
PING budda-bing!!!
So there’s a reason I used to go through the rooms in barracks every morning when I was a team leader, which was to make sure they were kept clean and habitable. Take the NCOs out of the barracks through years of “better opportunities”, spreading Soldiers across multiple barracks through some centrally managed program, not compelling other leaders to get in, and you get these unhealthy conditions. (Worsened by centrally managed maintenance.). As a BN CDR, my Soldiers were invariably surprised to see me wandering the battalion area, checking the facilities, washers and dryers, etc., on weekends when I was a BN CDR, which is embarrassing to leaders of all ranks. Didn’t take long to fix presence, but until we get leaders in routinely, we will have unhealthy conditions. I don’t advocate going all the way back to the kind of checks I had to make as a SGT, but routinely inspecting for health and maintenance prevents knee jerk reactions only well after rot has set in.
I recently read an article about a soldier who was missing for 5 days; didn’t show up for assigned duty, nobody in the unit saw him. On the fifth day someone finally decided to check his room, and there he was–dead.
This sure ain’t the Army I remember, and as bad as it was when I was in I am not sure this is any better.