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Local fire chief takes skills to Middle East

Fort A.P. Hill's fire chief lends his expertise to the military in Baghdad

Date published: 6/18/2009

By RUSTY DENNEN

Dan Glembot protects soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, but he doesn't carry a rifle.

In fact, the 44-year-old Beaverdam resident is not even a soldier. He's a civilian fire chief who has spent the past nine months in the war zone with a singular purpose: eliminating electrical hazards that cause fires and electrocutions on military bases.

Following an alarming string of electrical problems and injuries reported by troops in the field, the Army set up a task force in Iraq to investigate and correct them.

Task Force SAFE (Safety Actions for Fire and Electricity) was set up by Congress in August 2008 to inspect, assess and correct electrical, fire or safety issues at thousands of coalition sites in Iraq.

Glembot, fire chief at Fort A.P. Hill since 2002, was chosen by the Army for his fire-fighting expertise.

"You just knew that conditions there were bad, or they wouldn't be deploying a civilian to a war zone," Glembot said in a telephone interview this week from Baghdad, where he works for the Multi-National Force-Iraq.

DEADLY TOLL

More than a dozen U.S. soldiers have been electrocuted in Iraq since the war began in 2003. In one case, a Green Beret was electrocuted in a shower because of an improperly grounded electrical device. Fires are a byproduct of electrical malfunctions.

Glembot has been a firefighter on Army installations for 23 years, first at Fort Belvoir in Northern Virginia, and then as chief at Fort A.P. Hill starting in 2002.

He said it's been relatively easy to adjust.

"I've been working for the Army for so long I have a military mind-set. You just get one" working around soldiers all day. At the Caroline base, one of the Army's largest training facilities on the East Coast, temporary wiring is the rule at soldier's field camps and firefighters get lots of experience ensuring it's done safely.

In Iraq, Glembot says, electrical systems were hastily installed under combat conditions.

"One of the biggest issues was the lack of bonded and grounded [equipment]," he said. So when a circuit was overloaded, it might not trip a circuit-breaker and would result in an electrical shock or a fire.

"Things were put together fast, and not necessarily to code."

Daniel Glembot grew up in Oxon Hill, Md., and is a graduate of Columbia Southern University in Alabama. He began working as a firefighter for the Army at Fort Belvoir in 1986 and became fire chief at Fort A.P. Hill in 2002, supervising a department of about 30 people.

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Date published: 6/18/2009