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Lawmakers push for barracks hearing

Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., called Wednesday for a congressional hearing to discuss on-post housing in response to recent controversy over soldiers at Fort Bragg, N.C., being housed in rundown, Korean War-era barracks.

Clinton and other lawmakers began expressing their concern about Army barracks conditions after a video surfaced on the Internet that showed paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division returning from a 15-month combat deployment in Afghanistan to barracks with peeling paint, mold and filthy restroom facilities.

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“Less than 15 months after the revelations of substandard living conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, this news from Fort Bragg is particularly disturbing,” Clinton wrote in a recent press release. “After asking our men and women in uniform to sacrifice so much on 15-month deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, it is the least we can do to ensure that they can return home to clean and livable conditions.”

In an April 30 letter to Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Clinton requested a hearing to evaluate on-post housing conditions at Bragg and other installations.

“If adequate on-post housing is not available at Fort Bragg or elsewhere for returning troops, then we should not only speed up construction of new barracks, but we should also look at temporary options to ensure that returning service members can find off-post housing using a basic allowance for housing (BAH) or other appropriate means,” she wrote.

So far, Fort Bragg has received all the attention on this issue, but an April 24 Government Accountability Office report found that the Army — and the rest of the military — has been unable to maintain its facilities properly.

Between fiscal years 2005 and 2007, the Army did not fund $2.2 billion “of their estimated annual facility sustainment requirements,” the report states.

The video of Fort Bragg’s barracks conditions, shot by the father of Sgt. Jeff Frawley on April 14, has prompted other lawmakers to weigh in on the issue as well.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., wrote a letter to Army Secretary Pete Geren today requesting that the Army “immediately relocate any soldiers facing hazardous living conditions at [Fort] Bragg.”

“These veterans of a recent 15-month deployment to some of the most remote regions of Afghanistan are apparently living in deplorable conditions,” Feingold wrote. “For their bravery and courageous service, they deserve much better.”

Army installation officials told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday that most of the problems in that video were “corrected two weeks ago,” Brig. Gen. Dennis Rogers, the deputy director of Operations & Facilities of Army Installation Command said.

The Army responded to the issue recently by ordering commanders from all major commands to conduct a service-wide barracks inspection to ensure similar conditions don’t exist on other Army installations.

Currently, four of the 82nd Airborne Division’s six brigades are living in brand new barracks. The other two brigades, which include Frawley’s unit, are living in 1950s-era barracks that are scheduled to be demolished within five years. All soldiers, Army-wide, are scheduled to be in new barracks by 2012.

Watch:

Ed Frawley’s YouTube.com video

DISCUSS: Are you surprised?

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Do you know of barracks or other soldiers’ facilities that are in bad shape — dirty, moldy or falling apart? Tell us about it. Send a message, with the word “barracks” in the message line, to armylet@atpco.com.

Related reading:

Army-wide barracks inspection ordered

Poor conditions at Bragg barracks exposed