A soldier in Hawaii who posted online that the air conditioning in his barracks had not worked since January told Task & Purpose that the problem was finally resolved on Tuesday.
The soldier posted on Hots & Cots on Saturday that the air conditioning in Building 356 in Schofield Barracks C Quad, which houses about 150 soldiers, had stopped working on Jan. 30 following a power outage.
This is the latest episode in a growing trend of soldiers turning to online message boards and other services after long waits for service or other quality-of-life issues.
“I turned to Hots & Cots because unless a work order is considered an emergency by [the Directorate of Public Works], it’s very unlikely that an issue will get solved quickly or at all unless the battalion barracks managers bring it up to DPW,” the soldier wrote in a text message to Task & Purpose.
The entire base lost power on Jan. 30 and although the electricity was restored the following day, the air conditioning in the base’s older buildings typically remains off even after power comes back on, the soldier said.
As of Tuesday morning, many rooms in Building 356 still did not have air conditioning, the soldier said. After Task & Purpose asked Army officials about the problem, the soldier said later that day that air conditioning had been fixed.
“The A/C [air conditioning] was not working for any of the ~15 soldiers I talked to this morning who are in rooms all throughout the building,” the soldier wrote in a text message on Tuesday. “DPW came and fixed something around 1430 this afternoon and, as far as I’m tracking, all of them now have working A/C.”
U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii spokesman Nathan Wilkes told Task & Purpose that work orders for three of the four rooms in the building without air conditioning were opened on Feb. 20, and repairs were completed on Tuesday. The air conditioning in the other room was fixed on Feb. 7.
“The delay in immediate repair was due to a backlog in repair supplies,” Wilkes wrote in an email. “We are currently monitoring 144 soldiers residing in Barracks 356 and report no other air conditioning outages at this time.”
Although the Army has urged soldiers to go through their chain of command and submit work orders to resolve barracks issues, time and time again such problems have not been fixed until soldiers have raised their concerns on online forums such as Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or other platforms.
The soldier in Hawaii said he believed that the Directorate of Public Works at Schofield Barracks focuses on fixing emergency work orders first, while other types of issues such as a broken microwave or a hole in the ceiling may take several requests to resolve or remain unrepaired.
“I had a conversation with one of the DPW workers a few months ago when he was here working on something else and he mentioned that they almost always have a 6+ month-long backlog of non-emergency work orders,” the soldier wrote.
In general, the Directorate of Public Works is responsible for preventive maintenance, emergency service calls for minor repairs, and major repairs of barracks facility components like replacing roofs, electric, plumbing systems, carpet and tile or refinishing wall surfaces. The DPW is not responsible for repairing or replacing non-attached equipment or furniture or a building’s structural or foundational components, according to the Army Barracks Management Program Handbook.
Service members and military families are increasingly going online to bring public awareness to problems with barracks and other on-base housing that their chain of command can’t or won’t fix. Earlier this month, Hots & Cots posted that the air conditioning had failed in several buildings at Fort Cavazos, Texas, and base officials’ initial attempts to resolve the issue were unsuccessful.
At Fort Liberty, North Carolina – soon to be renamed Fort Bragg – a soldier-run Instagram account posted complaints in early 2023 that uncollected garbage had been piling up on base for weeks. After news outlets covered the problem, the garbage was finally taken away.
Other online communities where troops and their families have turned for help include U.S. Army WTF! Moments and the Army and military unofficial subredit forms.