“I’ve been in the government since 2002, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Freeman said. “I guess I’m a little bitter about the situation. It could have been 100 percent avoidable, my injury.”
There were warnings about poor conditions for years, even before the main firehouse building went up in flames in 2019, causing significant damage. And when Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) visited the installation Monday, they said the facilities remained in a “total state of disrepair” and they demanded that the Navy prioritize building a new fire station to protect the firefighters from hazardous living conditions.
Van Hollen and Raskin said that despite years of pressing the Navy to take care of the problems, they have continued to receive reports of sagging floors, mold, structural issues or rodents, including a mouse found in the refrigeration system recently, which a Navy spokesman characterized as a single event. At this point, Van Hollen said, the costs of the seemingly never-ending repairs and the cost to the firefighters’ safety far exceeds the cost of simply building a new station, which the Navy has not yet committed to doing in its next budget.
“The cost of doing nothing, just in terms of dollars and sense, are huge — even bigger in terms of the human cost and risk to the firefighters,” Van Hollen told reporters after touring the facilities and meeting with Freeman.
“Clearly when you have firefighters falling through the floor of the firehouse, you have a problem,” said Edward Kelly, general president of the International Association of Firefighters, who joined the lawmakers at the news conference.
The original firehouse was built in the 1940s, servicing the installation and surrounding Montgomery County neighborhoods, and caught fire in 2019. But even before then, it had been under scrutiny for poor conditions. The bunkhouse where firefighters live, on the other hand, was built in 2011 and was only supposed to be temporary.
In a letter to Van Hollen in July, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said the Navy completed “preliminary planning” for a new 16,500-square-foot firehouse at the Bethesda installation at an estimated cost of $22.5 million, but the project is in the department’s pipeline alongside myriad others. Del Toro also said the Navy had awarded contracts to repair the damaged flooring, construct new door frames and upgrade the building to address a water-intrusion problem.
A Navy spokesperson added Monday that repairs to air conditioning were also done, and a contract has been awarded to repair the ceiling in the engine-bay that had been water-damaged. That ceiling had also previously collapsed in 2019, Freeman said, and the recent repair contract is due to lingering problems.
But in a statement, the Navy did not commit to building the new firehouse through the 2024 budget, saying decisions haven’t yet been made about the budget.
The conditions are part of a pattern of problems with the living situation at the installation that have persisted for years. Earlier this year, service members living at base barracks at NSA Bethesda, which is home to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, lodged a flood of complaints ranging from no hot water to broken air conditioning. Two buildings underwent major repairs, and one of those buildings is set to reopen soon after residents were relocated, a spokesman said Monday. Maryland lawmakers wrote to the Navy at that time to once again urge the Navy to prioritize…
Read More: At NSA Bethesda barracks, mold and rodents are among unsafe conditions
