Flushed toilet at military housing resulted in toilet water dripping from multiple spots on the kitchen ceiling
After living in hotels for five weeks, a military family finally moved into base housing at Fort Gordon. Events quickly brought the excitement and relief to an end. Someone flushed the toilet. However, instead of the plumbing infrastructure working the way it was expected to work, toilet water dripped from multiple spots on the kitchen ceiling.
From the Military Times:
“That night, things took a turn,” she said. Around 8 p.m., after an upstairs toilet had failed to flush, she noticed a liquid leaking from multiple spots in the kitchen ceiling.
It was brown, it was disgusting, and it was flowing uncontrollably, including into the bathtub.
“Water with poop was falling into our kitchen, with our groceries we’d just bought and onto our dog bed,” she said. She immediately notified the privatized housing company on base, Balfour Beatty Communities. Before midnight arrived, they were told they were being displaced, “that we should move to a hotel in an unfamiliar area, with two kids, two dogs and everything we had brought with us,” she said.
So, after moving from Washington state across the country in the middle of the school year and living in a hotel, she had to tell her children they had to move to a hotel again.
“We can’t use any of the bathrooms,” she said. “We can’t live with poop falling from the ceiling.”
Viera and two other Army wives spoke about their experiences during a military housing oversight session on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., conducted by Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia. Since taking office in 2021 and meeting with troops and families, Ossoff and his staff have been investigating housing problems at Fort Gordon and across the nation.
Issues like those faced by the Vieras continue despite the massive reforms enacted by Congress more than three years ago, which required the Defense Department and military services to address a raft of tenant concerns and improve their oversight of privatized housing. The Army wives, all current or former residents of Fort Gordon, described their problems with mold, water intrusion, sewage backups and leakage within the past year. And their problems also occurred after the senator’s April 2022 investigation at Fort Gordon that spurred the Army to take action.
The Military Times has the rest of the story.
Category: Military issues
We lived for many years with an outhouse.
And that was a step up from the Viet of the Nam facilities.
But excrement dripping from the ceiling is just plain disgusting.
One can read Senator Ossoff’s report about Balfour Beatty at this site:
https://www.wrdw.com/2023/04/18/3-military-moms-leave-dc-with-hope-about-fort-gordon-housing/
At least the dogs had a good time.
The $62 some odd MILLIONS that are being spent to change the names of Southern Military Installations would have been a good start on fixing some of the problems on said military installations. So would some of the BILLIONS being spent on “foreign aid”.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
gabn/gabaf/hbtd/rtr
Foreign aid is like dumping our money into toilet bowls!
Sorry. Money for the toilet was already sent to Ukraine.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
To be fair, Balfour Beatty Communities PMCSed the house but the -10 they were using was not updated to reflect Army standard regarding use of pronouns and other non triggering language so most of their time was rage tweeting about working conditions.
We can do better
Spend a $100k on paining the house rainbow and that should solve the issues.
fab u lous!!!!
Honey, why does the syrup on my pancakes taste strange?
Oh sorry honey, I switched to “Log” Cabin brand.
Fortunately, I/we never had that bad of problems with military housing.
But….I was but an AIT student at Ft Garbage, so, no on-base housing for me/my family. We lived in a double-wide off-post. You could see the ground around the hole where the toilet was installed. ANd cockroaches……I mean water bugs! Flying dive bombers that lived in the pine trees surrounding the trailer park. And many other bugs and crawly critters lived “with us” in the park AND trailer.
“We lived in a double-wide”
In Maine that would be a two family dwelling….
“Army Secretary Says She Wouldn’t Want Her Daughters Living in Some Army Barracks”
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/04/19/ive-seen-some-barracks-i-wouldnt-want-my-daughters-live-army-secretary-tells-congress.html
“Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told lawmakers Wednesday that a chunk of the service’s barracks are seemingly unlivable as senior leaders grapple with living conditions for the rank and file and a relatively small budget to quickly improve standards.”
“I’ve seen some barracks quite frankly I wouldn’t want my daughters to live in,” Wormuth said at a House hearing on the Army’s budget.”
“The Army plans to spend $1 billion per year this decade on construction and renovation. But that is seemingly not enough funding, with a report from the Congressional Budget Office estimating it would cost $11.2 billion to fix up barracks at just two installations: Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. Those two bases have enlisted living quarters that have been the hardest hit with mold issues.”
“I want parents to know that their kids are going to have good accommodations,” Wormuth told lawmakers.”
Mold seems to be a modern problem. I lived in a number of WWII “temporary” barracks with no mold. Even some pre-war barracks at Ft. Benning. Wonder why that is.
I will also bet there are still some pre-WWII buildings (Yeah, they missed some) in Germany being used, with no mold.
“Last Year, Sailors at Key West Were Struggling to Find A Place to Live. They Still Are”
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/04/19/last-year-sailors-key-west-were-struggling-find-place-live-they-still-are.html
“Almost a year after the Navy shuttered two barracks buildings on its base in Key West, Florida, leaving sailors scrambling to find a place to live, sailors and officials say that between long wait times and promises that failed to materialize, the housing crunch persists.”
“Adding to the troubles for the base is the fact that it is in desperate need of air traffic controllers — a key job since the base also handles air traffic for the nearby civilian airport. The housing shortage has prevented the base from bringing in more help, leaders tell their sailors.”
“The result is that the base continues to struggle to attract and house sailors while others rotate out. One sailor said that “it’s like we’re bleeding out.”
Sounds like All-Points Logistics had this contract….
HEADLINE: MILITARY REMAINS UNCLEAR ON WHY RETENTION ISSUES ARE INCREASING AND RECRUITMENTS ARE DOWN
The Pentagon failed its fifth audit and is unable to account for 60% of its 3.5 trillion in assets due to substandard accounting practices that would result in criminal charges in the private sector. Meanwhile troops at base housing live with mold, sewage dripping, and substandard living conditions. The Pentagon found no relationship between the substandard living conditions and the lowered retention rates among troops with families in substandard housing. The Pentagon also remains stumped as to why recruiting numbers are well below expectations at the current time.
The Pentagon believes instead of addressing housing and pay concerns the best solution might be to offer more waivers to those who were previously unfit for duty in order to fill gaps in recruiting, meanwhile regarding retention they remain convinced that despite a paltry increase in budget of just over 125 billion during the last two years they will be able to squeeze out 1 billion to correct only two of the multitude of locations with major housing concerns.
Here is a little CovAIDS cult humour:
The whole thing… a master class on fighting illiberalism with the greatest weapon against tyrannical fuckfaces: mockery.
Headshed,
I don’t know how/why this got here, swear I was on the other article. My B.
Please nix this.
Fort Gordon- what a dump! I was there for MP AIT in January 1967- lived in a 10-man tent with no heat. We had to take cold showers in the WWII barracks next to our tent. It sounds like it is still a dump.
Sad thing is, I was an Air Force Brat up to the day I left for Basic Training, having lived in Base Housing in the US and Overseas. We never had issues like this, and if something broke we called CE and they came out and fixed it. I’m not saying all housing was perfect, but we never saw issues like I read in the news nowadays.
Years later this Privatized Housing shit starts and I see one complaint after another. Seems like the military would be better off taking control of base housing again. Also seems like these companies are getting rich and not doing a damn thing.
The military has always had control of base housing. If they cannot or will not enforce the contract with the civilian contractors that’s on the military. It’s just more convenient to blame civilians for military screwups.
Talk about taking a dump on our service members’ families…
The contractors and whoever approved the inspections should all be arrested and housed in those facilities for a minimum 5 years.
Well, they could always live in civilian housing. That is, after all, why they have a housing allowance.