SEATTLE — Officials at Fort Lewis were surprised to be on a U.S. Army list of eight installations that need to repair their barracks immediately after recent worldwide base inspections.
Base spokesman Joe Piek said the $7.4 million promised by the Army for immediate repairs at Fort Lewis will not come with a list of needed work, because an inspection of the base’s 105 barracks last week found no serious life, health or safety issues.
“The Army officials here at Fort Lewis who manage barracks were surprised by the characterization of the immediacy of the repairs,” Piek said Friday.
Army Secretary Pete Geren has said that $248 million in emergency funding has been appropriated to fix problems found during the inspections around the world.
The Army on Friday identified eight installations that will get priority attention: Fort Lewis, near Tacoma,; Fort Polk, La.; Fort Gordon, Ga.; Fort Bragg, N.C.; Fort Stewart, Ga.; the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York; Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland; and Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates called barracks conditions appalling and ordered base commanders to ensure their troops have proper quarters.
As far as Fort Lewis barracks being described as in need of immediate repairs, however, Piek said, “This is a wholly inaccurate characterization of our situation.”
The base does have some old barracks dating back to the 1950s that it would like to improve for its soldiers, Piek said. The kinds of repairs these buildings need include things such as missing screens, new paint and light fixtures.
“We haven’t determined how we’re going to spend this money, because we just found out about it,” Piek said, adding that he has not seen the report filed after last week’s inspection.
Soldiers at Fort Lewis live in buildings that date back as far as 1927, but the base is in the middle of a massive rebuilding and renovation project.
The base for 28,924 soldiers has been building new barracks and upgrading old ones for the past seven years, mostly to accommodate population growth as new Stryker brigades are formed or moved to Washington state.
The 86,000-acre base is in the midst of a $2.8 billion construction plan, which will add 6,000 new barrack spaces and renovate thousands more as well as pay for other construction, Piek said.
Another $1.9 billion is budgeted for base construction over the next five years, including facilities other than barracks.
Twenty-one new barracks buildings have been built on base since 1995, so more than a third of the soldiers currently living at Fort Lewis are in new barracks, Piek said. About a quarter of its barracks are undergoing some kind of interior renovation.
Fort Lewis and an associated training center in Yakima form one of largest Army facilities in the nation with bunk space for more than 10,000 soldiers, but more than half of Fort Lewis’ population lives off base or is currently deployed. The base is scheduled to grow to 32,000 soldiers by 2012.
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