Army fixes blame for soldiers’ deaths
The Associated Press reports that the Army has completed their investigation into the tragic loss of nine soldiers almost a year ago at Fort Hood, Texas when they were swept away by flash food waters while in training. We talked a bit about the accident when it happened.
According to the article, twelve soldiers were training in convoy operations when they encountered the raging waters at Owl Creek. The duece-and-a-half truck entered the stream which had swollen to seven feet deep and the current toppled the truck and the soldiers riding in the back.
The investigation placed much of the blame for DeLeon’s death on Staff Sgt. Miguel Angel Colonvazquez, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and the patrol leader in the transport convoy. He was among the nine who drowned in what ranks among the worst training disasters in the 75-year history of the Central Texas post.
Three other unit leaders who were not with the transport have also been recommended for reprimands. Their names have been redacted in the report.
Apparently, Fort Hood command authority had issued a warning six hours earlier (five hours before the National Weather Center issued their warning), declaring all creek crossings off-limits, but that warning hadn’t reached the battalion. They were all members of the 3rd Battalion, 16th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division except one West Point cadet who was doing his summer training with the unit.
Category: Army News
Moving water can carry away a regular 4-door sedan when it’s only 18 inches deep, if the current has any speed to it. I shudder to think how rapidly that truck would be rolled over and wadded up like a soda can in 7-foot-deep swiftwater. Somebody (probably not just one guy) who should’ve known better fucked up bad, and even then, the driver of the truck should’ve had the sense to know criminal stupidity when he saw it. Hopefully they’re not just blaming the dead guy as an easy way out.
God rest those who died, and be with their families.
The truck wasn’t “wadded up” at all. I’ve got a photo of it at the motorpool from shortly after the accident.
I once was dumb enough to drive through what were “still waters” in Southern California after the El Nino storm of 1992. It was a puddle that was about 50 yards across that covered a road. No movement at all.
I was able to cross it, but the water came up to the bottom of the door and leaked through and soaked the flooring. The car stunk to high heaven for weeks afterwards. I am extremely lucky that the car didn’t stall or there wasnt a sinkhole in that road.
The worse part about it was I had my 1 year old in a car seat with me.
If a Cop or Fire and rescue would have snatched me up and monkey stomped me afterwards I wouldn’t have lifted a hand to defend myself.
As soon as I got through it I thanked God he didn’t apply Darwin’s Law to me then and there.
Ugh. Just a tragedy, any way you call it.
24 inches of moving water can pick a HMMWV up and flip it, we’ll never know what made them think they’d make it, what a tragic loss of lives.
Accident chain in action, what a shame. Somehow I don’t think a SSG should bear the brunt of the blame; this smacks of “Get the check in the box” training pressure, and miss- communication issues.
But that’s just me.
Its just SSG in the Army.
Just FTR, all Ranks in the US Army are abbreviated with three capital letters.
Negative.
Brigadier and Major Generals are BG and MG.
Fixed, thanks for the correction.
No problem, bud!
Flood water:
It is -deeper- than you think.
It is -faster- than you think.
It is -mightier- than you are, by orders of magnitude.
Treat it like a raging fire of same size: stay -out- of it unless survival depends on entering it, and even then, attack as a team.
It is -not- a muddy swimming pool.
In TRAINING(!)-Safety first. Always. Please.
According to the article, the notice banning water crossings went out on email and never got below division level. That should have been put out on range control.
I remember when email first started. Commanders were adamant that it not be used for official tasking, and safety messages.
And they’re correct. Doubly so considering the sheer volume of electronic correspondence today, most of it (seemingly) trivial and therefore ignored.
Fixing blame, rather than the problem.
How Big (enter service here) of them.
Sorry, but blaming a now-deceased soldier serves little purpose other than CYA. What SHOULD have been discussed is what were the root causes and how are situations like this prevented in the future?
You can’t blame generals for everything. They can’t hold everybody’s hand. Those lower on the totem pole have to assume some responsibility.
I have always heard that giving responsibility to subordinate leaders was a good thing. Develop leadership qualities and all that. That includes accepting the blame when you do something stupid.
I’ve seen enough idiocy during the “monsoons” (4 July-Labor Day) at Ft Huachuca, to know that you DON’T cross any low areas with running water, or go into slot canyons or similar. I’ve seen the broadcast and televised results of enough other idiots to not copy their actions.
My sympathies to all involved.
What do they teach 88M at AIT? I was one for years, but I was a Commercial driver on the civilian side already and had the MOS awarded to me. Was the SSG to blame – partly. Did the driver or anyone else question the wisdom of the order – who knows. Did the command give any training on fording bodies of water – especially at Hood, where thunderstorms can come out of nowhere? Unknown. Lots of questions, and I’m sure there were a lot of answers that DA didn’t want released to the general public. Unfortunately, lives were lost in order to highlight an apparent system problem.
Truck mounted communications must of been left out of the equation somewhere. F’ng beyond me why nobody bothered to dispatch MPs to shut down the crossings in the first place.
As an aid to training, I offer this:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/os/water/tadd/images/WaterPhysics.pdf
(Yes, this is a pdf of a PowerPoint, but it is an informative one.)
There are other places that give more about the physics of flowing water on an object for those interested.
Or you can just have someone try to pry a pinned canoe off of a rock in a river flowing at 10mph.
Remember once crossing a flooded road in NM; water only a foot deep or so – we got half-way across and a wall of water about a foot tall came downstream at us and just the fringes of it were enough to damn near push us over a small cliff. Doesn’t take much.