Cold Comfort — Heat, Hot Water Woes at Walter Reed
The Walter Reed facility dubbed “Hotel Aftermath” in an award-winning exposé in The Washington Post three years ago, suffered from a dearth of hot water during the frigid first days of the year, an inside source tips “Line of Departure.”
And at least two other buildings on the Walter Reed complex had heating problems, forcing some wounded warriors to move to other rooms, or in at least one case being given an space heater, a spokesman for Walter Reed confirms.
In the case of the heating problems at Abrams Hall and Building 11, the fix to the heating system was pretty quick, according to spokesman Chuck Dasey. The the plumber called to repair the hot water outage at Mologne house at first tried a temporary repair to a faulty valve, but it didn’t work, Dasey said. The fully-booked 280-room hotel for military personnel and their families was without hot water for nearly five days, while a replacement valve was ordered, and installed.
“I looked like we were not very responsive,” Dasey told Line of Departure. “There’s a big review of maintenance procedures underway,” in the wake of the problems, which Dasey conceded resulted in many complaints from the hotel’s occupants.
Here’s how the Washington Post described Mologne House in the second installment of the series which won the Pulitzer prize for Public service in 2007, for Washington reporters Dana Priest, Anne Hull and photographer Michel du Cille.
“The luckiest stay at Mologne House, a four-story hotel on a grassy slope behind the hospital. Mologne House opened 10 years ago as a short-term lodging facility for military personnel, retirees and their family members. Then came Sept. 11 and five years of sustained warfare. Now, the silver walkers of retired generals convalescing from hip surgery have been replaced by prosthetics propped against Xbox games and Jessica Simpson posters smiling down on brain-rattled grunts… The hotel is built in the Georgian revival style, and inside it offers the usual amenities: daily maid service, front-desk clerks in formal vests and a bar off the lobby that opens every afternoon. But at this bar, the soldier who orders a vodka tonic one night says to the bartender, “If I had two hands, I’d order two.” The customers sitting around the tables are missing limbs, their ears are melted off, and their faces are tattooed purple by shrapnel patterns.
Spokesman Dasey says the review is aimed at making sure there is no repeat of the heat and hot water problems at Walter Reed. “Taking care of our wounded Warriors is our highest priority,” he said.
Tags: Heat, Hot Water, Mologne House, Walter Reed, Wounded Warriors
