Ft. Bliss Recovers After Major Snow Storm Freeze

Broken pipes, flooded homes, ruined property. It’s time to clean up the mess after last week’s massive snow storm. Like many El Pasoans, Specialist Joshua Lister is having trouble getting his life back to normal.

“It’s been a chaotic week,” said Lister. He and many of his neighbors have been without running water for about about that long.

ABC-7 spoke with Lister as construction crews tore up the drywall in his bathroom and patched up leaks in his plumbing.

“Right now they’re trying to get one side of my house running hot and cold water so we can get out of the hotel we’re staying in,” he said. His wife and four kids have been sleeping at a hotel while the water issues get fixed. He said Ft. Bliss families were issued vouchers or told they’d be compensated for the expense once they checked out.

Fort Bliss Garrison Commander Col. Joseph Simonelli said facilities at the post weren’t spared from the severe weather’s effects. “We still have some issues out here, we still have several homes without water, but we’re aggressively going after those and fixing them as best we can,” he said.

That’s why officials called in the big guns to help the recovery efforts. The post’s housing management company, Balfour Beatty Communities, enlisted the help of Belfor Property Restoration.

“We have over 100 people from Balfour Restoration which is a nationally recognized disaster response team,” said Carey Kann, who works for BBC.

Belfor Restoration’s project manager at Fort Bliss, Tony Fowler, said some homes have as many as 20 water main breaks each. He said their crews have been working around the clock in 12 hour shifts since Super Bowl Sunday to restore water service.

For those without water within the first few days of the storm’s wallop, officials established water points around the community. “Residents could go and actually pick up (free) bottles of water” said Col. Simonelli.

Lister said he also appreciated other efforts to check up on soldiers and their families. “Soldiers would come by and drop off water (door to door), which was fantastic for people like us (who didn’t have any),” he said.

Col. Simonelli said there are about 34-hundred homes on post– almost 560 of which were damaged by the storm.

Fowler said all the homes at Ft. Bliss should have running water again by the end of the day on Friday.