South Carolina Mold News

Mikhail Gorbachev was laid to rest Saturday in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife, Raisa, with whom he shared the world stage in a visibly close and loving marriage that was unprecedented for a Soviet leader.

“They were a true pair. She was a part of him, almost always at his side,” then Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany said at Raisa’s funeral in 1999, where Gorbachev wept openly. “Much of what he achieved is simply unimaginable without his wife.”

Gorbachev’s very public devotion to his family broke the stuffy mold of previous Soviet leaders, just as his openness to political reform did.

“He loved a woman more than his work. I think he wouldn’t have been able to embrace her if his hands were stained with blood,” wrote Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov, editor of Russia’s leading independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta. Co-owned by Gorbachev, it was forced to shut under official pressure after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We should always remember,” Muratov continued, “he loved a woman more than his work, he placed human rights above the state and he valued peaceful skies more than personal power.”

Gorbachev’s open attachment to his family also stands in stark contrast to the secrecy that surrounds the private life of Russia’s current leader, President Vladimir Putin.

For her part, Raisa Gorbacheva cut a bold figure for Soviet first ladies — more visible, with a direct way of speaking, a polished manner and fashionable clothes. A sociologist by training, she had met Mikhail at a Moscow university where they both studied.

“One day we took each other by the hand and went for a walk in the evening. And we walked like that for our whole life,” Gorbachev told Vogue magazine in 2013. Raisa accompanied him on his travels, and they discussed policy and politics together.

Her confident demeanor and prominent public role didn’t sit well with many Russians, who had also soured on Gorbachev and blamed his policies for the subsequent breakup of the Soviet Union. The couple won sympathy, however, in 1999, when it was revealed that Raisa was dying of leukemia. Her husband spoke daily with television reporters, and the sometimes lofty-sounding politician of old was suddenly seen as an emotional, grieving family man.

For more than two decades after she was gone, Gorbachev kept Raisa’s memory alive and embraced his status as a lonely widower.

He released a CD of seven romantic songs, “Songs for Raisa,” in 2009 on which he sang along with well-known Russian musician and guitarist Andrei Makarevich. Sales went to the charities Raisa had founded. A few years later, he published a book dedicated to her, “Alone with Myself.”

Their marriage even became the subject of a popular play in Moscow in 2021, “Gorbachev.” Its point was one noteworthy for Russia: that the country’s leader was a human being who prioritized family, friends and personal obligations. One scene recounted a key moment in Gorbachev’s career when he returned to Moscow after the failed communist coup against him in 1991. Raisa had had a stroke, and instead of immediately stepping back onto the political stage, he went to the hospital to be with her.

“I was not married to the country — Russia or the Soviet Union,” Gorbachev wrote in his memoirs. “I was married to my wife, and that night I went with her to the hospital.”

At the Moscow cemetery, a life-size statue of Raisa has stood for many years now over the grave intended for them both.

The Gorbachevs had a daughter, Irina, two granddaughters and a great-granddaughter. Despite his attachment to family, Gorbachev lived out his life in Russia while they live in Germany.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a businessman in the early post-Soviet days who now lives in exile in London, tweeted this week that one of Gorbachev’s great strengths was his ability to wash away “awe of the person on the throne,” and that his attention to family was part of that.

“With this he changed my life. And also by his attitude toward Raisa Maximovna — a second important lesson,” Khodorkovsky said, using Gorbacheva’s patronymic. “He went to her. Rest in peace.”

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

When Mikhail Gorbachev is buried Saturday at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery, he will once again be next to his wife, Raisa, with whom he shared the world stage in a visibly close and loving marriage that was unprecedented for a Soviet leader.

“They were a true pair. She was a part of him, almost always at his side,” then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany said at Raisa’s funeral in 1999, where Gorbachev wept openly. “Much of what he achieved is simply unimaginable without his wife.”

Gorbachev’s very public devotion to his family broke the stuffy mold of previous Soviet leaders, just as his openness to political reform did.

“He loved a woman more than his work. I think he wouldn’t have been able to embrace her if his hands were stained with blood,” wrote Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov, editor of Russia’s leading independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta. Co-owned by Gorbachev, it was forced to shut under official pressure after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We should always remember,” Muratov continued, “he loved a woman more than his work, he placed human rights above the state and he valued peaceful skies more than personal power.”

Gorbachev’s open attachment to his family also stands in stark contrast to the secrecy that surrounds the private life of Russia’s current leader, President Vladimir Putin.

For her part, Raisa Gorbacheva cut a bold figure for Soviet first ladies — more visible, with a direct way of speaking, a polished manner and fashionable clothes. A sociologist by training, she had met Mikhail at a Moscow university where they both studied.

“One day we took each other by the hand and went for a walk in the evening. And we walked like that for our whole life,” Gorbachev told Vogue magazine in 2013. Raisa accompanied him on his travels, and they discussed policy and politics together.

Her confident demeanor and prominent public role didn’t sit well with many Russians, who had also soured on Gorbachev and blamed his policies for the subsequent breakup of the Soviet Union. The couple won sympathy, however, in 1999, when it was revealed that Raisa was dying of leukemia. Her husband spoke daily with television reporters, and the sometimes lofty-sounding politician of old was suddenly seen as an emotional, grieving family man.

For more than two decades after she was gone, Gorbachev kept Raisa’s memory alive and embraced his status as a lonely widower.

He released a CD of seven romantic songs, “Songs for Raisa,” in 2009 on which he sang along with well-known Russian musician and guitarist Andrei Makarevich. Sales went to the charities Raisa had founded. A few years later, he published a book dedicated to her, “Alone with Myself.”

Their marriage even became the subject of a popular play in Moscow in 2021, “Gorbachev.” Its point was one noteworthy for Russia: that the country’s leader was a human being who prioritized family, friends and personal obligations. One scene recounted a key moment in Gorbachev’s career when he returned to Moscow after the failed communist coup against him in 1991. Raisa had had a stroke, and instead of immediately stepping back onto the political stage, he went to the hospital to be with her.

“I was not married to the country — Russia or the Soviet Union,” Gorbachev wrote in his memoirs. “I was married to my wife, and that night I went with her to the hospital.”

At the Moscow cemetery, a life-size statue of Raisa has stood for many years now over the grave intended for them both.

The Gorbachevs had a daughter, Irina, two granddaughters and a great-granddaughter. Despite his attachment to family, Gorbachev lived out his life in Russia while they live in Germany.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a businessman in the early post-Soviet days who now lives in exile in London, tweeted this week that one of Gorbachev’s great strengths was his ability to wash away “awe of the person on the throne,” and that his attention to family was part of that.

“With this he changed my life. And also by his attitude toward Raisa Maximovna — a second important lesson,” Khodorkovsky said, using Gorbacheva’s patronymic. “He went to her. Rest in peace.”

By JULIA RUBIN – Associated Press

Miami Herald | Entertainment

This article was posted online by Miami Herald | Entertainment. Spot On Florida collects excepts of news articles from this source and add these in the ‘Florida Entertainment’-category.

The mold infestation at Fort Bragg’s Smoke Bomb Hill barracks that is expected to displace roughly 1,200 soldiers is a hardly unique phenomenon for military installations.

Marines based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and Okinawa, Japan; airmen at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas; and midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, are just some of the many service members who have had to live with disgusting mold outbreaks. (Privatized housing can be even worse.)

The increasing reports of mold in military living quarters stem from a series of longstanding issues that have compounded over time, said Katherine Kuzminski, director of the military, veterans, and society program at the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington, D.C.

“It’s the result of basing decisions made decades ago, placing military installations at locations with land that was affordable for the federal government, which we’re now seeing are more susceptible to changes in the climate,” Kuzminski told Task & Purpose. “But it also reflects a lack of investment in updated HVAC [heating, ventilation, and air conditioning] systems and broader living quarter conditions. Given the services’ emphasis on ‘people first,’ regular maintenance and updates to living quarters are a necessary investment in the health and wellbeing of service members—particularly those in lower paygrades.”

Representatives from the Department of the Air Force and Marine Corps said that providing healthy, safe, and well-maintained living quarters for their service members is a top priority and any airmen, Space Force Guardians, or Marines who encounter mold are encouraged to report their issues to facility managers. The Navy did not respond to questions on the matter by deadline.

Subscribe to Task & Purpose Today. Get the latest military news, entertainment, and gear in your inbox daily.

In addition to the longstanding issues that can create mold problems, the effect of climate change could exacerbate the chances that a building could become infested with mold, defense officials told Task & Purpose. That’s why the Defense Department has implement plans to protect on-base housing from extreme weather and climate change. The military is committed to providing high quality housing to U.S. troops and their families as well as modern and safe living quarters for unaccompanied junior enlisted service members.

At Fort Bragg, the barracks with mold problems are more than 50 years old and their heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems do not meet today’s standards, said Sgt. Maj. Alex Licea, a spokesman for Fort Bragg and the 18th Airborne Corps.

“Despite continuous repairs, the changes to air flow from these old systems created higher than normal moisture and quality of life concerns,” Licea told Task & Purpose. “We have reached a point that these HVAC repairs are now more expensive than investing in the construction of new barracks for our soldiers.”

Going forward, the Army plans to use a new system to inspect barracks that will look at heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems separately from the buildings, Aaron Brown, director of Fort Bragg’s Directorate of Public Works, told reporters on Friday.

Army officials have said they hope to get all the roughly 1,200 affected soldiers into new living quarters by the end of September, but mold has been found in other buildings at Fort Bragg. As of Friday, Army officials had 21 work requests to deal with mold issues, of which just two were in the Smoke Bomb Hill barracks, Col. John Wilcox, Fort Bragg’s garrison commander, said during a conference call with reporters on Friday.

The living conditions at the Smoke Bomb Hill barracks – including a hole in one room’s wall and exposed pipes – were first revealed by Military.com reporter Steve Beynon, who accompanied Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston during an inspection of the barracks in July.

Grinston’s visit came in response to a complaint that Army Secretary Christine Wormuth had received about Smoke Bomb Hill. About 50 rooms within the 12 barracks were reportedly found to be infested with mold.

“We knew that there was mold in there, but we would go in and clean it up, but it was a case-by-case basis, and when we actually looked holistic at the whole barracks complex, it just currently was not working,” Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Tickner, deputy commanding general of U.S. Army Installation Management Command, said on Friday’s conference call.

It is not clear why officials at Fort Bragg apparently did not know the full extent of the Smoke Bomb Hill barracks’ mold issues before Grinston’s inspection.

Noncommissioned officers were aware of mold issues in a lot of Smoke Bomb Barracks’ rooms, and they made sure that any work orders for mold were completed, Command Sgt. Maj. T.J. Holland, 18th Airborne Corps’ senior enlisted advisor, said during Friday’s conference call.

“Leaders were present,” Holland said. “Leaders were doing things, and leaders were the ones who sounded off loud and hard with their soldiers communicating that: ‘Hey, what we’re doing isn’t enough anymore and we have to get after it; we’ve got to do better for our soldiers.’ And that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

Neither Holland nor any of the other Army officials who took part in the conference call mentioned how Grinston’s inspection of the Smoke Bomb Hill barracks influenced their decision to move soldiers to new living quarters.

Mold is not a new problem for troops living on base. But the climate is changing and extremely strong storms are becoming more common: Marine Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, is threatened by rising sea levels and it had to be evacuated due to hurricanes in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. The combined effects of more heat and moisture in the air and the military’s aging infrastructure likely means that troops will be bleaching mold off their walls much more often in the future.

UPDATE: This story was update on Aug. 29 with comments from defense officials.

The latest on Task & Purpose

Want to write for Task & Purpose? Click here. Or check out the latest stories on our homepage. 

FORT BRAGG, N.C. — Mold, aging ventilation and outdated buildings have forced the military to find new housing for more than 1,000 soldiers living at Fort Bragg.

>> Read more trending news

An inspection in early August revealed mold covering rooms from floor to ceiling, severe water leaks, asbestos, poor ventilation and no air conditioning, WRAL reported.

Officials told The Fayetteville Observer that it had relocated 100 soldiers and approved 55 certificates to allow soldiers to find private housing on or off the post. The same officials said another 380 certificates are in the process of being approved.

While more than 1,000 soldiers will be moving out of the barracks in the coming weeks, other soldiers told CBS News that mold is growing in their barracks as well, describing it as “black specks all across the furniture and across the walls.”

Gen. Edward Daly, head of Army Materiel Command, told Military.com that the military will change the way inspections are done going forward. While soldiers had been tasked with the inspections, the military now plans to hire civilian contractors for the task.

Fort Bragg told CBS News that the Army plans to demolish and rebuild 12 of the barracks at Fort Bragg that were found to be substandard, and renovate five others.

In a statement to CBS News, a Fort Bragg spokesperson said: “Our enduring obligation at Fort Bragg and as Army leaders is to take care of our people — our soldiers and their families. Their health and welfare is of the utmost importance to our Army readiness.”

©2022 Cox Media Group

• Over 1,100 soldiers have been living in mold-infested barracks at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg.
• The US Army said it plans to relocate all soldiers at at least one facility by the end of September.
• Soldiers in other barracks have reported mold problems and are concerned they won’t be relocated. 

Soldiers at Fort Bragg — home to US Army elite airborne and special operations forces — have been living in barracks infested with mold that potentially puts their health at risk, and the Army is now trying to figure out where else they can live.

The North Carolina base is in the process of relocating over 1,100 soldiers from the Smoke Bomb Hill barracks, which were built in the mid-1970s, because it uncovered “substandard conditions” during an inspection earlier in August. However, some soldiers in other barracks have reported mold and said they weren’t being moved. 

Fort Bragg said the Smoke Hill Bomb barracks are not up to current heating, ventilation, and air conditioning standards. Air flow changes and repairs raised moisture levels, creating a “quality of life concern” for soldiers living in the barracks. 

All soldiers are expected to be moved out of this living area by the end of September, Fort Bragg said. As of Friday, 120 soldiers have been relocated, Fort Bragg’s Col. John Wilcox told reporters during a roundtable discussion.

Soldiers in other barracks have said that their facilities also have mold and have even provided photo evidence of the problems. Some of these soldiers have raised concerns that they will not getting the opportunity to move out, CBS News reported on Friday.

One soldier told the network it felt like a “punch to the gut” that not everyone would be relocated.

When asked about complaints concerning mold in barracks other than Smoke Bomb Hill, Army leaders at Fort Bragg said they have received around 40 work orders that identified problems across the campus. Leaders said they are working to assess the issues, and the goal is to move soldiers to a place that’s just as good or better than where they currently are living. 

Fort Bragg’s Director of Public Works Aaron Brown told reporters that as of Friday, they are fielding over 20 work requests that have some possible issue with mold, which are considered to be high-priority issues.  

Army leaders at Fort Bragg said that the soldiers who are relocating to other barracks aren’t being medically treated for any mold-related complications. Lt. Col. Teresa Pearce, director of public health at Fort Bragg, told reporters that the base has “not had any health complaints or concerns” brought up in relation to the barracks.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mold can cause a stuffy nose, sore throat, coughing, burning eyes, and skin infections. People who have asthma or who are allergic to mold, the CDC says, could have severe reactions if exposed. Longer-term exposure can have more detrimental effects.

During a July inspection at Fort Bragg, Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston — the Army’s top enlisted leader — scolded leadership for failures at the base’s barracks, Military.com reported earlier this month. 

“Lots happening to make this happen,” he tweeted on Wednesday in a response to a Fort Bragg statement on the barracks relocation project. “Moving 1200 Soldiers won’t be quick, but it will be done right.”

The Army has had to relocate soldiers in past years due to mold in Fort Bragg barracks. South Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, for instance, addressed this issue in a December 2021 letter to Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, urging the Army to immediately address the conditions of the barracks and pump money into better maintaining them.

“Allowing soldiers to live in moldy and unsafe housing is a danger to country,” he wrote, adding that he wants to “ensure the Army is effective in receiving and executing all available funding to modernize and replace substandard barracks by 2030.”