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Posted on 05/11/2008 1:28:47 PM PDT by raybbr
Three years and three months before Ryan Maseth stepped into a shower Jan. 2 in Baghdad, an Army safety specialist identified electrocution as a "killer of soldiers."
Still, when the 24-year-old Shaler Green Beret turned on the faucet, water flowed from a pump powered by an improperly grounded electrical system manufactured in China. Borne on water, an electrical current surged through the pipes, out of the shower head and into his body.
His heart stopped.
Maseth's electrocution, the latest of 14 among service personnel in Iraq since 2003, set into motion a series of events to determine how and why these deaths occurred. In March, a congressional committee started an investigation into all Iraq electrocutions. A month later, Maseth's parents sued the defense contractor responsible for the Chinese electrical system, alleging it failed to meet U.S. safety standards. And now, families across the country say they want more detailed information about the earlier deaths of loved ones.
"I want answers, not revenge," said Bart Cedergren of South St. Paul, Minn., who suspects his son died of electrocution Sept. 11, 2005, near Iskandariyah, Iraq.
Back then, the Navy said Petty Officer 3rd Class David A. Cedergren, 25, died of natural causes after being found unconscious in a shower stall, he said. Although Cedergren asked for additional information, he said he received only documents with black marks covering specifics of the investigation that the Navy has closed.
"I know for sure that there were problems where he was, near the electric generating station, because there was a history of individuals getting shocked," Cedergren said. "I just want to know what happened. He was strong and healthy."
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghlive.com ...
China’s products strike again.
Thank you, Richard Hussein Nixon, for opening up China.
It's situations like getting hard drives to operate in a shock and vibration environment on an Apache Attack Helicopter, or keeping the toilets from becoming missiles when a torpedo transfers it's energy into the deck of a ship.
It's the difference between a $50 coffee pot or a $500 coffee pot made to special MIL SPEC requirements. The $50 one puts enough broadband and narrow band noise into a missile guidance circuit that the missile couldn't keep on signal. It will also leak line to line and line to ground potential direct to the steel table it's sitting on.
It doesn’t look like China is at fault. It looks like KBR inc and mil maintenance are the ones at fault.
It looks like, to me, that they are all at fault. Why are we buying from China for our military? Cost effectiveness?
Sort of the same reasoning that made the early M-16 so dangerous to our troops.
I don't think DOD field generators come from China. I think KBR would be the only ones to do so, and that would be under a contract to provide facilities and facilty support. There would be no difference in a Chinese generator in terms of connections, or waveform. As long as it's connected right, it would work just like any other generator.
"Sort of the same reasoning that made the early M-16 so dangerous to our troops."
The powder used in the ammo was changed w/o testing...
That sounds like the emissions from contacts closing/opening. A solid state relay would eliminate that and still not bring the price to $500.
"It will also leak line to line and line to ground potential direct to the steel table it's sitting on."
Only the line's potential could be coupled to the table and that would be capacitively coupled. Any magnetic coupling would be small and just result in tiny eddy currents.
It took the Army's bureaucracy 6 years to wrap it's head around Stoners revolutionary M-16. Mil Spec.
In the early 80’s we'd go off base to buy our own Aimpoint sights, which had been out for five years. The Army preferred in low light, darkness we shoot off matte black iron sights. I think it took the Army almost 15 years to get Aimpoint like sights to common soldiers. Delta and SF had them off the shelf. Mil Spec.
The South Africans and Rhodesians had mine resistant vehicles 30-40 years ago. Even with the experience of Vietnam mines, and a hundred dirty wars around the world, the Army couldn't get the troops resistant vehicles, and the ones now are huge monsters. Mil Spec.
A good commercial coffee maker is near $200. It's been my observation that in the Army anyways, they are ten years , at least, behind the commercial market in quality and perfomance.
Both are...KBR AND Red China
The Air Force just contracted for the correct powder and it's perimeter guards had little problems.
So, then the Army tried to screw the pooch by doing all sorts of FrankenRifle modifications to the M-16. This went on for years. Resulting in chrome bolts, barrels, forward assist (all good things in a way).
I'm reminded of the US Navy in WWII with at least two or more years of crap, totally faulty torpedoes that the Navy torpedo bureaucracy blamed on Sub Skippers.
Not military, but just as close was NASA and the Challenger explosion with the frozen rubber rings on the solid boosters.
In order to include Red China, you need to show how a generator can electrocute someone when it's hooked up right. Good luck!
I was referring to the Sec of Defense wanting to save money by ordering the M16 without chrome plated chambers to save money.
There are no commercial machines or equipment which emmit less than 20db from 4HZ all the way up to 2GHZ without signifigant and costly redesign or modifications.
If you really want to have fun, try to TEMPEST comply your desktop PC. You'll find out very quickly that a $600 computer becomes a $7000 computer in order to get it there.
I don't want to overstate the obvious, but obtaining a good ground in sand is almost impossible. Most of Iraq is sand. I doubt the military attracts too many engineers to support deployed units. Cases like this were why we incorporated mil-specs into defense procurement in the first place! If the pump which electrocuted this soldier was being powered by the same generator that powered the radar units on site, what do you think the reliability of those units must be? Not good for much!
We need to send young males to Male Summer Camp so that they know how to solider a pipe, wire a circuit, build a shed, replace a water pump.
The young males I meet today are mechanically clueless.
I can attest to that. I have worked in industrial electrical maintenance for almost thirty years. I get lots of looks of dumbfoundedness every time I pull my meter out.
From the story: "They claim the contractor knew that hazardous conditions existed from improper grounding of faulty electrical systems manufactured in China for sale only to countries outside the United States because they did not comply with U.S. electrical safety standards."
I live on the Cape. All sand. As far as I know, good grounds are had by pounding down 10 foot, plus copper rods. Seems to work.
Specialized units like commo, Air Defense and such have their own dedicated generators and electricians, including of course high voltage.
Other stories have reported that KBR used electricians from Afganistan to do the work. Unless your young males are willing to work for the couple of bucks a day that the KBR electricans were willing to work for then their aptitude is meaningless.
The truth is that most mil specs pertaining to electricals have nothing to do with quality of the device. They are to make sure that when a shipboard glide slope is transmitting to a jet 30 miles out, that when someone turns on the deck elevator motor that the signal to noise ratio stays well above the noise. It’s for when the airforce drops a JDAM guided by a battery powered reciever on board, that a radio signal from the local Al-Jezeera network doesn’t stomp out the 3 watt signal from 12 miles away. I know a lot about shock and vibration too. The one ton and two ton impact tables, and the vibration tables. In all the cases the military issues a notice to bid. I would not suggest using a lot of commercial gear in a lot of critical applications in the military. My coffee pot example was an over-simplification. I have however seen a coffee pot go thru shielded room testing for use in CIA/NSA offices(which each room is actually a shielded room made to look like a regular office, tight to 100db)
Nothing is well tested until it’s give to a 20 year old Army PFC. I was once asked how we could keep the troops from breaking things and I said you could give them a block of Titanium and they’d bring it back broken.
For a lot of today’s-——, only been in school all my life and my mom never let me hang out at the dirty, old car repair place-—the military is their first experience with equipment.
Fix, build, repair is something you pay someone else to do. More and more now a days a non or first generation American.
” “Sort of the same reasoning that made the early M-16 so dangerous to our troops.”
The powder used in the ammo was changed w/o testing...”
Yes and no...The cyclic rate was just under what the army
weapons experts wanted so they switched to a faster burn powder to up the rate. The powder chosen did the job but left a lot of powder residue that resulted in the fouling of the chamber, leading to jammed weapons. The switch also favored the old boy network of powder suppliers that the army had used for years. Rather than admit a mistake had
been made, ordinance experts used desperate measures like
plating the chamber to make the bolt operate smoother and
easier to clean, only after untold number of lives had been
lost to a jammed weapon. The original AR-15 was and still
is one of the finest weapons every developed.
As long as the wires are paired and run along in a symetric fashion, there's no B field emissions. Any lossses are at line freq, from cap.
"There are no commercial machines or equipment which emmit less than 20db from 4HZ all the way up to 2GHZ without signifigant and costly redesign or modifications."
Coffee pots? It's not difficult. If I can make 4kW ovens be quite, it can be done to a coffee pot. ...so they don't cost near $500. BTW, I don't know why anyone would use thermistors and carbon brushes in a coffee pot.
"try to TEMPEST comply your desktop PC. ...$600->$7k..."
The PC wouldn't be much of a problem. A conventional tube monitor would. I only see $7k if someone agrees to pay thieves.
"I don't want to overstate the obvious, but obtaining a good ground in sand is almost impossible. Most of Iraq is sand."
That's irrelevant. There should be a separate ground wire and bonding to all those metal objects sitting on the sand that ended up conducting the line current. Keep in mind that in order for a shower head to put out a conducting stream, it must have been connected to the line. That probably means the line was shorted to the case/piping and essentially no ground wire to the neutral existed.
"If the pump which electrocuted this soldier was being powered by the same generator that powered the radar units on site, what do you think the reliability of those units must be?"
Radar units would have their own power source, that's generally from, or at least specified by the US manufacturer of that radio equip.
Richard Millhouse Nixon started a dialog with China that was entirely appropriate. Subsequently, political characters have abused the relationship with China to advance their own ends. The American public have had their Military and Industrial secrets stolen, elections influenced by illegal monies, and Public Health threatened by tainted (but inexpensive) products. The political characters steering this course is not Nixon.
I think the bigger cost for coffee pots is dealing with rapid decompression (as in don't explode).
In any case, commercial airborne coffee makers are as expensive as the military ones.
I sure the generator is simply a copy of what can be obtained anywhere else. There's no details about the electrical safety standards the gen did not meet mentioned. I'm sure they're irrelevant though and amount to not meeting UL stds. There is nothing that could have possibly have existed in the gen engineering that would have caused an electrocution if it was properly wired and interfaced with a proper distribution panel. THe safety stds were in regard to the propensity to fail, or maybe spit fire and sparks during a failure.
You’re assuming nobody has the hot and neutral reversed. It’s why mil spec stuff has the hot and neutral protected with fuses or breakers. I don’t know what a B field is, but I was refering to magnetic fields. As for TEMPEST, you don’t really know what’s what. Even the keyboard has to be shielded. I’d suggest you look it up. Carbon brushes are used on AC motors and DC motors of certain types and applications. Not everything is an induction motor. As for field equipment, required specs we did required it to perform on any power source available. A rack mounted system had to operate on anything from 90 volts AC or DC to 240 volts AC or DC and from 50HZ to 400HZ. The whole point was that it was readily field deployed. We supplied a complete cordset to match every possible configuration from anywhere in the world. The input would auto switch and chop any input to 120VAC, 60HZ for low voltage stuff and the 240 stuff to the same with three phase if it sensed it. The 480 stuff was available with auto switching from 50/60HZ to 400HZ. All the gear had to survive an air drop inside those green cases.
B is the magnetic induction, or flux density that results from a current. H is normally used for the magnetic field strength in radiation. B=μoH in the absence of magnetic materials, and B=μo(H +M) with magnetic materials. M is the magnetization of the magnetic material. Unless the wires of a power circuit are separated in space forming a loop, the magnetic field is contained in the transmission pair and doesn't radiate. THe field of one wire cancels that of the other. That's why one must separate them to use a inductive pickup to measure current.
"You’re assuming nobody has the hot and neutral reversed. It’s why mil spec stuff has the hot and neutral protected with fuses or breakers."
If the eqipment is grounded, reversing the hot and neutral would result in an immediate short. A fuse on the line only is fine for powering normal, non-electronic work. Fusing both lines serves the purpose of preventing reactive energy from damaging any electronics after a single line lead trips an open.
"TEMPEST... I’d suggest you look it up.
I'm familiar with it. The program is intended to eliminate compromising emissions.
"Carbon brushes are used on AC motors and DC motors of certain types and applications."
Yes, I'm aware that those with certain morphologies produce noise. However... coffee pots...
"... All the gear had to survive an air drop inside those green cases..."
That's fine for mission critical equipment, but the apps here were for KBR to provide living facilities. It looks to me like the KBR folks and whoever wired the place would have killed folks even with the DOD's finest gen set installed.
What was so appropriate about opening up dialogue and trade with a mass murderer who was keeping his country poor and weak? Now it’s not so poor and not so weak?
I was against it at the time, and I’m against any trade with China now.
Nixon was a cynic, and the cynics and traitors (Clinton above all others) who have shipped our technology to China are merely following Nixon’s lead.
Richard just said howdy. Clinton and Da Bush's began the U.S. to China broad scale sellout in earnest.
I would about bet there is a loose neutral in the system somewhere. Either in the power supply itself or the connected ciruits. Loose neutrals can kill quicker than the hots and sometimes are hard to find. I’ve worked in some industrial stuff where somebody jared a conduit and the lights went out. Then you become very careful till you find the loose connection.
Another reason to throw the bums out of office that have caused this problem. You know who you are , Diane Feinstein, Hillary Clinton, and get Susan Schwab out and shut down the USTR while you’re at it.
Well, the shower head, or the sewer was hot. That should never happen. It was probably the shower head, because of an ungrounded pump with a hot case. The sewer just provided a path back to the generator. I think if hte sewer was hot, it was done on purpose, instead of on stupid.
Had someone not attempted to unnecessarily ground an isolated, and thus safe electrical system, the deaths would not have occurred.
Public power systems are grounded to protect from lightning. This is done by grounding the center tap of all transformers. This grounded center tap is the reason that our homes electrical systems have to have a ground too.
In the case of a small local power system, that does not transmit power over tall arial transmission lines, the ground is not needed, and is actually a dangerous mistake, since it creates an otherwise non existant voltage potential to whatever the system is grounded to. In this case, it obviously was the water piping system of the buildings; very foolish!
Many possibilities in the electrocutions but your right the equipment ground is there for a reason. I would check the neutral bus though and any aluminum wiring {shouldn't even be there} as well.
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