Title: KBR got contract despite shoddy wiring - KBR President denies any wrongdoing in at least five soldier's deaths Source:
http://www.onenewsnow.com/vidPlayer.aspx?videoId=13222 URL Source:http://www.onenewsnow.com/vidPlayer.aspx?videoId=13222 Published:May 23, 2009 Author:Mike Frossia Post Date:2009-05-23 03:14:16 by HAPPY2BME-4UM Keywords:None Views:578 Comments:10
KBR got contract despite shoddy wiring An electrician hired by the Army to inspect electrical work at Iraqi facilities for U.S. soldiers says 90 percent of wiring done in new buildings by military contractor KBR, Inc. was done improperly. KBR's CEO is defending his company's work.
William Utt said that the standards that KBR employed were "known and approved in an expeditionary environment".
Translation: "We expected outrageous sums of money to electrify dwellings without performing the crucial task of driving ground electrodes and bonding all services to them." This makes as much sense as saying "We didn't think we had to install fire extinguishers near petrol storage dumps because it was a hot zone and we were supposed to be mobile." If they were going to be there long enough to build and wire showers they were there long enough to ground the goddam things! And, even Gen. Sanchez could not have signed off on unsafe work in direct contravention of the mandatory rules for safe electrical installations any more than he could have issued a memo suspending the safe storage of explosives and jet fuel. "Uh, it's okay to put the fuel in glass jars and set them on top of the "E" Club wall there, boys!"NOT!
Yeah, it would have been a bitch to drive ground rods in that hard, dry, rocky sandy desert, and in that killer heat to boot! I'm sure they had the AC running on temp power inside and none of those prima donna 150k per year electricians would go outside and do that nasty job with sledge hammers. And then they'd have to set up a regular route to wet the ground near those ground rods on a regular schedule, and who wanted that menial, shitty responsibility? Or worse yet, which KBR supervisor would even recommend such a regimen to the military if they were already getting away with murder?
But, like it or not there are no exceptions to the grounding rules of the code. No temporary shelter, office trailer, tool shed, DAWG kennnels or any other occupied dwelling may be energized with portable generators or grid power from the Haditha Dam turbines unless said dwellings are grounded.
Proper grounding would have saved lives because the instant those pipes, appliances or even the shower water was electrified the breakers/GFCIs would have tripped and interrupted the current flow. And then the faults would have been isolated and corrected before power could have been restored. (If someone disconnected the ground to hide the faults and restore service then he, she or they are criminals and at the very least guilty of negligent homicide. And, it just blows my mind that people died from circumstances that were totally avoidable.)
There is no excuse for those deaths and injuries, and there is no contractual escape chute or other affirmative defense other than KBR's possible political connections to allow those corporate rats to slip through some legal keyhole.
Hell, the slums of Rio are wired better than that (with stolen electrical service and wires running every which way-a bird can barely fly between houses there without getting killed) but no one is electrocuted while showering there!
I'd like to hear Utt explain how it is that 3rd world bootleg wiremen can do it better than KBR contractors when the latter are supposed to be pros and they have all the new equipment they could ever ask for.
I'd like to hear Utt explain how it is that 3rd world bootleg wiremen can do it better than KBR contractors when the latter are supposed to be pros and they have all the new equipment they could ever ask for.
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Better yet, I'd like to see him take a shower installed by his own company in Iraq.