This post was made at another newsgroup, but I thought it would be appropriate for this group. It appears that Iraqi electricians are not doing the grounding correctly.
In all, at least a dozen American military personnel have been electrocuted in Iraq, according to the Pentagon and Congressional investigators.
While several deaths have been attributed to inadvertent contact with power lines under battlefield conditions, the Army bulletin said that five deaths over the preceding year had apparently been caused by faulty grounding, and the circumstances of others have not been fully explained by the Army.
Many more soldiers have been injured by shocks, Pentagon officials and soldiers say.
The accidental deaths and close calls, which are being investigated by Congress and the Defense Department=92s inspector general, raise new questions about the oversight of contractors in the war zone, where unjustified killings by security guards, shoddy reconstruction projects and fraud involving military supplies have spurred previous inquiries.
American electricians who worked for KBR, the Houston-based defense contractor that is responsible for maintaining American bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, said they repeatedly warned company managers and military officials about unsafe electrical work, which was often performed by poorly trained Iraqis and Afghans paid just a few dollars a day.
One electrician warned his KBR bosses in his 2005 letter of resignation that unsafe electrical work was =93a disaster waiting to happen.=94
Another said he witnessed an American soldier in Afghanistan receiving a potentially lethal shock.
A third provided e-mail messages and other documents showing that he had complained to KBR and the government that logs were created to make it appear that nonexistent electrical safety systems were properly functioning.
KBR itself told the Pentagon in early 2007 about unsafe electrical wiring at a base near the Baghdad airport, but no repairs were made.
Less than a year later, a soldier was electrocuted in a shower there.
=93I don=92t feel like they did their job,=94 Carmen Nolasco Duran of La Puente, Calif., said of Pentagon officials.
Her brother, Specialist Marcos O. Nolasco, was electrocuted at a base in Baiji in May 2004 while showering.
=93They hired these contractors and yet they didn=92t go and double-check that the work was fine.=94
=2E.........................................................................= .=AD.......................
Keith Ernst, who stepped down Wednesday as the agency=92s director, acknowledged, though, that the agency was =93stretched too thin=94 in Iraq and that the small number of contract officers did not have expertise in dealing with so-called life support contracts, like that awarded to KBR to provide food, shelter and building maintenance.
=93We don=92t have the technical capability for overseeing life support systems,=94 he said.
For its part, KBR, which until last year was known as Kellogg, Brown and Root and was a subsidiary of Halliburton, denied that any lapses by the company had led to the electrocutions of American soldiers.
=46rom The New York Times, 5/4/08:
Despite Alert, Flawed Wiring Still Kills G.I.=92s
By JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON =97
In October 2004, the United States Army issued an urgent bulletin to commanders across Iraq, warning them of a deadly new threat to American soldiers.
Because of flawed electrical work by contractors, the bulletin stated, soldiers at American bases in Iraq had received severe electrical shocks, and some had even been electrocuted.
At a 173rd Airborne base in Shin Kay, Afghanistan, in 2005, an outdoor, 200-ampere breaker panel, above, was uncovered and wired from the top.
Its exposure to water made it unsafe, said Jeffrey Bliss, an electrician who worked for KBR, the military contractor.
Jeffrey Bliss, an electrician who worked for KBR, the military contractor.
The bulletin, with the headline =93The Unexpected Killer,=94 was issued after the horrific deaths of two soldiers who were caught in water =97 one in a shower, the other in a swimming pool =97 that was suddenly electrified after poorly grounded wiring short-circuited.
=93We=92ve had several shocks in showers and near misses here in Baghdad, as well as in other parts of the country,=94 Frank Trent, an expert with the Army Corps of Engineers, wrote in the bulletin.
=93As we install temporary and permanent power on our projects, we must ensure that we require contractors to properly ground electrical systems.=94
Since that warning, at least two more American soldiers have been electrocuted in similar circumstances.