FORT HOOD, Texas - Thirty-one World War II-era wooden buildings are slated for demolition this fall as part of the first phase of the installation’s Facility Reduction Program. The long-term goal of FRP is the elimination of World War II-era wooden structures by fiscal year 2017, according to officials from Fort Hood’s Directorate of Public Works.
Site surveys of the wooden structures were conducted June 13-14 by DPW facility utilization specialists and Brian Spear, a civil engineer from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer Support Center in Huntsville, Ala.
“The Corps of Engineers will oversee the contract for the demolition work,” John Burrow, chief of DPW’s Real Property Planning Division, said. “The site survey is the first step in that process.”
Most World War II-era wooden structures are located in the installation’s 4000 block, the 100-200 blocks and on North Fort Hood. The 31 buildings set to come down this fall total 161,000 square feet of structural space, at a cost of $1.4 million. Burrow said an additional 15 structures could come down by the end of the year if funding is secured for the effort. That would take down another 98,000 square feet of World War II wood.
Even before the Corps of Engineer site survey, Fort Hood demolished one World War II structure on 37th Street and Tank Destroyer Avenue. Building 190, a vacant 3,500 square-foot structure was hit earlier this year by an automobile, making the building unsafe, according to Rodney Henderson, an engineer technician with DPW and project manager of the building’s demolition.
“The building came down in a day,” Henderson said of the contracted demolition effort June 8. “All the debris was taken away the next day. Only the cement slab is still there right now.”
In all, Fort Hood has nearly 800,000 square feet of World War II-era wooden structures slated for demolition. Most of the buildings were originally built for administrative, maintenance and warehouse purposes, Burrows said. The FRP effort eliminates these buildings, which offer “little flexibility in support of unit requirements, are maintenance intensive, and most of all, they are energy inefficient,” Burrow said.
Fort Hood’s FRP is part of an overall Installation Management Command initiative, which has funded $16.5 million for this fiscal year. Moving forward, Burrow said the cost of demolition of all of Fort Hood’s World War II-era wooden structures will be approximately $8 million.
“That’s a ball park figure,” he said, “based on an estimated cost of $10 per square foot.”
Burrow said as World War II wooden structures are vacated, they are not reassigned to other organizations and utilities are disconnected immediately. Looking ahead, he said the installation will see substantial savings in energy consumption from taking down the antiquated facilities.
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