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Making room for Airmen

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Richard Williams
  • 455th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan --  Shelter is one amenity that everyone needs. After working long hours, in sometimes inhospitable conditions, servicemembers want to return to an area where they can relax, take off their boots and enjoy some down time before they do it all again on the next shift.
For Bagram residents, living space has been tight. There is also the issue of working on one side of the base and commuting to the other side.

Members of the 455th Expeditionary Force Support Squadron with assistance from the 455th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron are taking steps to try to alleviate the tight living conditions, cut down the endless bus rides and help people get to their living areas a little easier.

According Staff Sgt. Blake Williams, 455th EFSS noncommissioned officer in charge of lodging, the issue of bed space, or the lack of, is priority number one.

"We are at about maximum capacity," said Williams, deployed from Moody Air Force Base, Ga. "We have new arrivals daily and there just isn't enough room to get people into a living area."

One of greatest obstacles lodging personnel had to overcome was the removal of transient tents the Air Force had been sharing with the Army. Williams said the loss of the tents along with their location made it difficult for personnel working on Camp Cunningham.

"One of the major issues was that we work until the day we leave here," he said. "It is difficult to commute from the east side to Camp Cunningham or from Cunningham or Camp Yuen to the east side. That is an additional hour and a half added to the duty day."

The solution: build more bed space.

One site under construction is located on the east side area of Bagram and it contains 20 Alaskan tents, said Senior Airman Marvin Reyes, 455th ECES, structures. "We have put the tents together to assist our lodging needs and this will provide an additional 200 bed spaces for transient personnel and some personnel who work on the east side of Bagram."

The tents were put together in about a week and a great deal of preparation has gone into preparing the site, said Reyes. "The biggest issue we face is the condition of the site when we find it. If the site is level, we may only have to pack the dirt and spread some gravel. This particular site was a little more challenging and we have been preparing it for about two months."

"The crew we have been working with here has been great," said Reyes, a native of Dallas, Texas. "For a team that has been trained to set these tents up it takes about an hour and a half to put one tent up, and for the EFSS personnel and the volunteers from the maintenance group to come out here and get these tents together in a quick amount of time, it has been pretty awesome."

The 455th EFSS lodging team is grateful for the civil engineers' support, although the primary 455th ECES mission is to maintain the airfield.

Williams, a Las Vegas native, said it has been frustrating at times but the goal is to get everyone a comfortable area to sleep, where they can feel that their belongings are secure when they go to work.

"The bottom line is that bed space is very important," he said. "It is very important to us (lodging). No one wants to sleep outside or in their office and that is what it was coming down to because we didn't have the space. Getting the extra 200 bed spaces is a start and it is vital to the morale and comfort of out Airmen to ensure we are accomplishing the mission."