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These pictures are of something we call "Tent City" Basically, they are tents with wooden floors to house incoming troops, or those passing though temporarily. We had a feeling that we had a good handle on this particular project. We finished having the 60 tents erected way ahead of schedule, and beyond the expectations of our supervisors; all with the intentions of being able to handle the "surge" of new soliders coming into the Camp in the next month or two (to handle the rotation of soliders from OIF3 (Operation Iraqi Freedom) to OIF4). All the permanent electrical cables in the ground were installed, and the wiring of the individual circuit breaker boxes for inside lighting and the heating/cooling units were near completion as well. At least 75% complete. However, about 2 days of rain, and some severe nightly storms reversed all those accomplishments, slowly but surely. In our daily journeys around Camp, we could see the tents slowly beginning to sag. Some time later, we could see a few with all of the sides leaning towards the inside of the tent. Even later, we saw some that were completely collapsed! After the 2nd night of rain, the following morning, there were more tents completely collapsed than there were standing. This is due to the way the ground here becomes completely water saturated (no sewer system) after a good rain and becomes soft, deep mud, that allows the 2 ft. tent pegs to just pull out of the ground. Our only option was to wait a day or two, and allow the ground to absorb the rain water, and let the sun and wind slowly dry the ground. We had to re-erect the tents with double the amount of tent stakes and place sand bags on top of the driven stakes, to attempt to hold them down in case of more rain! That's what life is like here... :) |
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