Soldier Reported Killed in Iraq Accident (10/21/03)

[alcuno]

Soldier Reported Killed in Iraq Accident 24 minutes ago BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP)- One soldier from the Army's 377th Theater Support Command was killed and another injured in a maintenance accident Tuesday in a camp north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. The accident occurred about at Camp Anaconda in the town of Balad, the U.S. Central Command said in a statement. The latest death brings to 340 the number of American soldiers to die in Iraq (news - web sites) since the war began March 20. Of that figure, 218 of the deaths have been by hostile fire.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031021/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_soldier_killed&cid=540&ncid=1478

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I didn't see this posted on LBN today.

[NNN0LHI]

1. Seen this reported earlier today...

...and didn't want to post it until there was more info. Doesn't look like there is going to be any more info? Rest in peace.

Don

[htuttle]

2. "Maintenance accident"

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it was another split-rim accident (since it affected two people). If that was the case, it wasn't pretty.

Cheap bastards. Skimp on the wheels, then skimp on the equipment and training to deal with those wheels.

[alcuno]

3. What's a split-rim accident?

I know what a car is.

[htuttle]

4. Cheap truck rims

I used to have to deal with them years ago at a garage.

They are in two pieces, and are pressed together. If they don't seat exactly right, they separate with explosive force. Decapitations or dismemberment are not uncommon when handling them, so most often you put the assembly in a strong cage when inflating (so if it explodes, the 'ring' piece doesn't go through you). We often used to wrap a chain through the middle, too.

The risk when using something like this after bouncing around on rough terrain is unthinkable. Unfortunately, I was reading on an Army maintenance forum somewhere (which had come up in a google search awhile back, the last time it happened) that the Army uses these 'split rims' on several common pieces of equipment (some trucks, for example). They don't often have a cage handy, and accidents are all too common.

Instead of split rims, the better-designed bolt-together rims should be used, but they cost more.

To be honest, after my experiences with them -- seeing one jump OUT of the cage and put a hole in a cinder block wall -- I try not to drive right next to a semi truck's tires on the freeway...

[NNN0LHI]

5. These truck tire split rims are often referred to as “widow makers.”

http://www.labour.gov.sk.ca/safety/bulletins/tire-mount.htm

Tire Mount/Demount on Heavy Vehicles

Introduction

On February 14, 1998, a mechanic was killed while removing the left rear wheel from a Toro 35D underground haul truck. The wheel was a detachable rim type, with the tire held in place by a collar and split ring. The collar and split ring were attached to the rim by the outer bolting flange.

As the mechanic removed the last nut holding the wheel assembly onto the axle, the rim failed and the outer bolting flange was projected away by air pressure. The outer bolting flange flew out from the wheel assembly and struck the mechanic in the chest. The force of the impact threw him back several metres against some shelving. He died shortly after the accident.

Investigation

The wheel assembly was found to have extensive fatigue cracks, both in the rim and in the outer bolting flange where it was bolted to the hub. The rim had been previously welded in a number of locations. These repairs were of poor quality.

The wheels from the entire fleet were checked. A total of three defective wheels were found, in addition to the wheel assembly that exploded. These wheels were immediately removed from service.

more

[alcuno]

6. Thanks for the explanations.

[jmowreader]

7. Sounds like someone forgot to teach his troops to read!

Any unit that has trucks with split-rim tires (most but not all) has a safety cage to put the tires in when they're being inflated.

The procedure for doing a split-rim is pretty basic:

a. Remove tire/wheel assembly from vehicle
b. Let air out of tire (if there's any in it), remove split ring, dismount tire.
c. Put new tire on, reinstall split ring.
d. Put tire/wheel assembly into safety cage, hook up safety chain, attach air hose (25 feet long) to tire.
e. Get the hell away from the safety cage! Stand on the other side of the cage from the split-rim, and as far as you can get while still holding the valve. Inflate tire.

This way, when the tire pops the split ring off, no one dies.

The problem: too many troops take shortcuts--they either lay the tire on the ground with the split ring down or they wrap a piece of chain around the tire when they inflate it because it's too much trouble to roll the tire into the cage and fasten the chain. My unit's mechanic in Korea did a little demonstration for us once. He took us to the Camp Coiner baseball field. laid a split-rim tire off a deuce and a half right next to the pitcher's mound (we didn't know he'd purposely mounted the ring wrong) with a chain wrapped around it and the split ring pointing down, then inflated the tire while we were behind the home-plate cage. When the ring came off, the tire self-destructed and the rim (with the chain and part of the tire attached) flew six feet in the air. Good enough for me, but Carl was bummin' that it didn't fly like the one they did in Vietnam. His personal best was eighteen feet in the air.