Another Knoxville cleanup company has a fulminating task in Iraq
by Mike Gibson
For better and worse, the terror attack of Sept. 11, 2001 set in motion a domino chain of strategic and military actions, from the purging of purportedly terrorist-linked Al Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan to war in Iraq and the toppling of despotic leader Saddam Hussein.
In the latter instance, employees of Knoxville's Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technology firm (EODT, Inc.) were given the unenviable task of making Iraqi oilfields safe for resuming operations after the conflict.
Founded in 1987 by a handful of former military-explosives experts, EODT's earliest mission was chiefly that of escorting environmentalists onto former domestic military sites, where unexploded ordnance (UXO) presented unseen hazards for the scientists engaged in salvaging suitable habitats for indigenous wildlife.
EODT Director of Projects Steve Voland, a big, jovial guy with red hair shaved in the tell-tale military crew, is only half-joking when he chuckles that "the company's first assignment was go make sure it was safe for environmentalists studying whether or not these little woodpeckers could still screw up in the trees. Those little suckers really kind of started the industry."
With the advent of the '90s and the Clinton administration's closing of several military bases across the country, the ordnance-disposal business exploded (pun intended). Since 9/11, it has swollen to a $200-million-per-year industry, as firms like EODT have been hired as consultants on the proper handling and storage of explosives and munitions in the wake of an ATF crackdown on such.
For Operation: RIO (Restore Iraqi Oil), EODT sent 30 former military operatives to the oilfields of southern Iraq, charged with ensuring the safety of the repair technicians who would shut off leaking pipelines and clean up spills: "We had to make it safe for them from point A to point B without getting blown up," says Voland.
Ordnance-disposal techs may confront everything from small blasting caps to chemical weapons. In Iraq, the most frequently encountered hazards were from submunitions (the explosive elements discharged by artillery shells), minefields, and undiscovered caches of weapons, which were often rigged with booby traps.
The EODT crews used a sophisticated array of devices, including metal detectors, GPS systems, ground-penetrating radar and other so-called geophysical instruments to identify UXOs, then relied on their military training to detonate munitions harmlessly with the aid of shields, sandbags and the like.
"We came across lots of things we weren't comfortable with, like kids working in a field with ordnance in it," says Voland. "It would be like going out into a field next to your house and being able to pick up unexploded shells."
"We had a lot of inquisitive kids wanting to see what was going on," says EODT technician Bob Prosperi, an Air Force veteran who served on a special United Nations weapons-inspection commission during the first Gulf War. "We needed a lot of security to keep them out of the areas we were working."
The RIO crews had relatively little interaction with the people of Iraq, stationed as they were in the sparsely-populated farm communities that surround the oilfields. The Iraqis they did see were invariably poverty-stricken, farmers in mud-brick houses with dirt floors and tin roofs, or bedouins in tents in the open desert.
Prosperi was surprised to find that tomatoes were an important cash crop in Iraq's inhospitably dry desert heat. "It was hard to believe," he says. "There were just fields and fields and fields of tomato plants."
For the duration of their stay, the RIO crew members' accommodations were only slightly better than those of their indigenous neighbors. Sixty men lived in a single large, un-air-conditioned tent near the Kuwaiti border, commuting two hours each way to work long days in the fields.
The RIO mess tent was staffed by an American company that provided meals of lamb, fish and rice to hungry workers. "The food was hit or miss," Prosperi says. "But they made an effort to get you good chow, and you definitely ate every meal."
Reaction to the American crews' presence was mixed, but generally positive, Prosperi says, and largely dependent on the number of Fedayeen (paramilitary Hussein loyalists) in the area.
"Some places had more loyalists egging people on," he continues. "There was also some frustration, because many of these people had lost electricity in the war or didn't have food.
"Most people were inquisitive, just curious about what was going on. We heard of a couple of cases where children had been hurt before we got there, one of them with a shell and the other with a land mine. So they were glad to see us get rid of this stuff."
September 11, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 37
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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