Military families displaced by Red Hill water contamination make do at Christmas

Cheri Burness purchased a Christmas tree in November, but it remains undecorated in her family’s Halsey Terrace home, where they’ve celebrated the past seven Christmases.

Instead, the 48-year-old Navy wife and her 14-year-old son, 12-year-old daughter and 2-year-old boxer will celebrate the holiday with a little artificial tree in their room at the Hyatt Place in Waikiki, where they’ve been cooped up since the first week of December.

The Burnesses are among 4,084 military families who moved out of military housing when their tap water was contaminated by fuel leaking from the Navy’s underground Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, and an estimated 3,400 have been living out of hotel rooms over the past few weeks.

Another 4,086 chose to remain in their homes, relying on deliveries of potable water and other assistance, the Navy said. About 93,000 people in neighborhoods in and around Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam are affected by the contamination.

“It sucks,” Burness said. “Normally, we have a tree and the kids decorate it, and we make cookies. My son asked me if I was going to make ham,” which is “something he looks forward to.”

But Burness has no place to prepare her traditional home-cooked holiday feast in their hotel room, where there’s just a minifridge and a microwave that she bought.

“I’ll try to find a place to pick up ham dinners, but maybe it’s too late,” she said, adding the family is tired of eating out. “We’re a lot better off than a lot of families. At least we have a roof over our heads.”

Burness’ husband is on assignment and won’t be home for Christmas for the first time in their 16-year marriage.

“It’d be better to have him here, but it might be worse — one more person in the hotel,” she said, adding that the room is tight as it is with two queen beds and a sleeper sofa for three humans and a 60-pound dog.

The Burnesses moved into their Halsey Terrace home in 2014, the same year 27,000 gallons of fuel spilled from the Red Hill facility. They were never told of the leak, and are now skeptical of anything the Navy says about the water contamination crisis.

A Navy official said Monday that as much as 19,000 gallons of fuel may have been released from a Red Hill fuel tank May 6, possibly migrating into the Navy’s drinking water system. The Navy’s latest theory is that the fuel spilled into a lower tunnel and ended up being pumped into a fire suppression system pipeline, which ruptured Nov. 20.

It was around that time that military families on the Navy system began noticing that their tap water smelled of fuel and experiencing health problems such as skin rashes, nausea, vomiting and headaches.

Like a canary in a coal mine, the family pet, Lilikoi, was the first to sense something was wrong.

The dog began vomiting and refusing food and water for a couple of days before the family noticed the fuel smell in their tap water. Burness said Lilikoi would not drink water from her stainless-steel bowl until it was replaced with a new bowl filled with bottled water.

“She immediately drank a liter of water,” then another two liters in the next 12 hours, she said.

A friend’s tiny 12-year-old dog had diarrhea, vomiting and seizures, and she thought the dog was old and near the end, so she put her down. “It probably wasn’t necessary,” Burness said. “She was just sick from the water.”

“I’m lucky that my dog is bigger and young, and she smelled it and refused it.”

Burness, who has asthma, and her daughter also became ill with headaches and breathing problems from fumes in the water. She has been seeing a neurologist for nerve pain and memory loss, which others in the neighborhood have been reporting.

In the three weeks since the family moved out of their home Dec. 2, their symptoms have lessened.

Burness said if it hadn’t been for Lilikoi and the thought of leaving the dog in a military-selected kennel, she would have been visiting relatives in Connecticut for the holidays.

“Especially having been sick, I wouldn’t want to leave her,” she said.

Military officials are unsure when the Navy system’s drinking water will be safe again and the families can return home. They at first said that could be as early as Christmas. In accordance with the Drinking Water Distribution System Recovery Plan signed Dec. 17 by the Navy, Army, state Department of Health and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Navy this week began flushing the system waterlines in some of the affected neighborhoods, but there’s much work left to be done.

“I don’t know how much longer I can stand,” Burness said. “Our neighborhood won’t be done until the end of January, from what they’re reporting.”

Burness said the children get bored in the hotel room, and she doesn’t want them running around Waikiki, so sometimes she takes them home so her son can run around the neighborhood.

The family initially stayed for two days at the Waikiki Beachcomber, as arranged by the government, but opted to move to Hyatt Place, where the room is 100 square feet larger, after the government approved a higher per diem during the holidays, she said.

Since they aren’t at a government-contracted hotel where military families stay at no cost to them, the Burnesses have to pay upfront for their hotel, and so far have racked up $15,000 in out-of-pocket expenses for lodging and meals until they can be reimbursed by the Navy, Burness said.

Some help is available from the Navy Marine Corps Relief Society office at Pearl Harbor, which is providing no-interest bridge loans to those families staying at a hotel of their choice.

Emilee Carpenter, who is five months pregnant, and her Navy husband are spending Christmas at her parents’ home in Newberry, S.C. The Carpenters, who were high school sweethearts, were living in military housing in Salt Lake.

“We decided it’s safer for me to move home,” said Carpenter, 21. “He’s home with me now, getting me settled in, and is flying back this weekend.”

When her parents heard about the water crisis, they told her to “just come home and we’ll take care of you.”

“So I’m really lucky,” Carpenter said.

She is relieved her unborn baby has been “extremely active … but we’re both concerned about what the adverse effects are going to be in the long term.”

“A lot of my symptoms, based on what everyone else was going through, was really similar: stomachaches, extreme nausea, bad headaches every day,” she said. “We honestly thought it was just a rough first trimester.”

Since leaving the house, “most of my symptoms have gotten better. The nausea has let up tremendously.”

So have the skin problems that plagued her husband, according to Carpenter.

She hopes he will be transferred to his new assignment on the East Coast before the baby, due in May, is born.

The Navy Installations Command is providing “morale, welfare and recreation” events for families affected by the water contamination crisis during the holidays.

“There are a lot people — military folks, charitable organizations — that really wanted to do something for the families and make it work,” said Navy Master Chief Misty Flynn, who helped prepare for a Christmas Eve event at the Hale Koa hotel’s Luau Garden in Waikiki.

Kids took photos with Santa, the Navy League and Toys for Tots passed out presents, and the USO gave out craft kits for the children. The Defense Commissary Agency donated food and snacks.