Colin Erwin, National Guard, Civilian Contractor, injured in Afghanistan

Colin Erwin was wounded by mortar fire in Afghanistan.

Sgt. Erwin was working overseas as a contractor. Even though the war veteran left his uniform behind this time, he wasn’t out of harm’s way.

Hundreds Welcome Injured Soldier/Contractor Home

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) -  May 10, 2012

A wounded Huntsville solider is on his way home from Afghanistan and you can show your support for him this week.

Sgt. Colin Erwin is with the 203rd MP Alabama Army National Guard. He was working as a contractor supporting the Army when the gym he was in took a direct hit from mortar fire.

Sgt. Erwin’s mother said her son suffered injuries to the torso and right leg.

Sgt. Erwin will arrive at Huntsville Airport Thursday at 10:30 a.m. He will be escorted home by friends, family and patriot guard riders.

Anyone interested in welcoming home this wounded warrior is asked to be at the Huntsville Airport by 10 a.m. Madison Fire, Monrovia Fire and Heritage Elementary will line the streets along the route on County Line Road to Old Railroad Bed Road. The family invites supporters to also line the route.

Department of Labor Refusal to find CNA in 18(a) default of order

As referenced in the previous post Department of Labor District Offices Dead in the Water Scott Bloch filed a request to find CNA in 18(a) Default of an Order on behalf of Merlin Clark on September 16, 2011.

Merlin Clark has been denied medical by CNA since 2005 after being blown up in 2003.  An order signed by an ALJ and issued by the Jacksonville District Director in October of 2010 has not been complied with.

After giving CNA nearly a year to comply this request was filed just prior to the one year deadline for doing so.  It’s not that they did not have the opportunity for nearly year to comply, if not five prior years to live up to their contractual obligations to the taxpayer.

Yet this 18 (a) Request for a Default has been denied due process.  Three additional months of non compliance on top of nearly a year.  No attempts by CNA to bs their way out until this issue was posted here on the blog.  They know there is no consequence to them when they do not comply with orders.

Instead of issuing a supplemental order  and allowing Mr. Clark to exercise his rights outside of this broken Administrative Law System the District Director has taken it upon himself to attempt to mediate this already decided claim yet again.

Where does this Not Very Merry Go Round stop, if ever?

Why does the Department of Labor repeatedly side with the insurance company with no regard to the health and well being of injured war zone contractors and their families?

Who is benefiting from this?

American Civilian Contractor Injured in Attack on Foreign Base Kandahar

Attack on foreign base ends after six hours; one killed  October 27, 2011

Kandahar (dpa) – One Afghan interpreter was killed Thursday in an attack on a NATO-led reconstruction office in southern Afghanistan that lasted six hours, police said.

Three attackers climbed a building close to the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) office of the NATO-led forces in Kandahar city and launched an attack on the compound, said Salim Ehsas, the commander of police for that zone.

‘The fight is over. Two of the insurgents were killed by police and one escaped. We are looking to find him,’ Ehsas said.

NATO’s southern command said in a statement that an Afghan interpreter was killed in the gun-battle in the volatile southern province of Kandahar.

Five international soldiers, an American civilian contractor and two Afghan security guards were also injured in the attack, the statement said

 

Iraqi Interpreter dies of “unknown cause” after being denied benefits by DBA Insurance Company

Why was this injured contractor on Medicaid for L-3 Titan and the DBA Insurance Companies responsibility?

Friends seek to raise $15,000 to send body of Iraqi interpreter back to Baghdad for burial

He was frustrated that his service did not seem to afford the kind of respect and care that he expected of the U.S. government when he came here and he really wanted to go back to Iraq.

–Matthew LaPlante

SALT LAKE CITY -- KSL TV  September 26, 2011

At a prosthetics center in Salt Lake City, Diyar al-Bayati looks at the painful set of legs he got in Jordan. (Ramin Rahimian, Special to The Denver Post) Read more: Iraqi interpreters at loss for words - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com

Friends of an Iraqi interpreter who served with U.S. troops in the Iraq War are scrambling to raise thousands of dollars to send his body back to Baghdad for proper burial.

Diyar al-Bayati died in Salt Lake City last week, alone in his apartment, of unknown causes. He’d been living in Utah for several years — the last stop in a long and winding road.

A group of suitcases sit in a corner of the apartment of Ali Al-Amri and his wife Janae. They contain the worldly possessions of their friend Diyar al-Bayati, a former Iraqi translator for the U.S. military.

“I’m sad because he’s my friend,” Ali said. “I work with him a couple of years.”

Ali worked as Diyar’s caretaker after Diyar arrived in the U.S. in 2008. Diyar lived in Baghdad, working as a translator with military contractor L-3/Titan.

Disaster struck in 2006, as Matthew LaPlante, a former national security reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune, explained.

“He’d done 200 combat missions, rolled outside the wire with these guys 200 times and on the very last hour of his very last mission, a really large improvised explosive device, a roadside device, blew up under his Humvee,” he said. “As the story goes, he continued firing at his attackers, basically until he passed out in a pool of his own blood.”

Diyar lost both legs and one arm was mangled. He spent a year in a Jordan hospital.

Two years after the explosion, though his motorized wheelchair was destroyed en route, he arrived as a refugee in Salt Lake City, where his story attracted news coverage.

His friends describe him as strong-willed, optimistic and sociable. But his medical benefits, through the contractors insurance and Medicaid, left him frustrated, and he never got a pair of decent prosthetic legs.

“He was frustrated that his service did not seem to afford the kind of respect and care that he expected of the U.S. government when he came here and he really wanted to go back to Iraq,” LaPlante said.

Now, friends are trying to fulfill Diyar’s wish to be buried back home in Baghdad.

“I need from the people to try to help him to come to Iraq, that’s all,” Ali said. “Try to help him. I say please because nobody for him, nobody here. No his mom. No nothing.”

They need to raise $15,000 to send his body back to his mother.

“We just want to get him back home to be with his mom,” Ali said. “Let his mom know that we appreciated her son’s work.”

Diyar al-Bayati died just short of his 25th birthday.

To help raise the roughly $15,000 they need to send his body back to Iraq, friends have set up an account in his name at Wells Fargo Bank

The Republic  September 26, 2011

SALT LAKE CITY — Donations are being sought by friends of a former Iraqi interpreter to send his body back to Baghdad for burial.

Twenty-four-year-old Diyar al-Bayati (dee-YAR’ all-BAY’-yah-tea) died of unknown causes last week in his apartment after living in Utah as a refugee for three years.

Al-Bayati worked as an interpreter for American troops during the Iraq War until 2006, when he lost both legs and an arm after a roadside bomb blew up under a Humvee.

Al-Bayati never qualified for the high-tech prosthetic limbs provided to injured soldiers because he worked for a private contractor.

KSL-TV reports (http://bit.ly/nGcgeX) that his friends in Utah are now trying to raise $15,000 to return al-Bayati’s body to Iraq, where his mom lives, for a proper burial

Please see the original here

Army vet battling private insurer for coverage she feels is due

“The American Psychiatric Association has a very specific and rigid stance against psychiatrists rendering diagnoses on patients they have not examined.”

Injured as contractor in Afghanistan but denied specialized therapy at home

Kevin Graman The Spokesman Review  June 13, 2011

A highly trained helicopter mechanic sits in her Chattaroy home and wonders what will come next: another debilitating brain seizure or the therapy she hopes will help her recover from injury as a result of a mortar explosion 20 months ago in Afghanistan.

Jennifer Barcklay says she is being denied the specialized inpatient medical treatment her doctors believe is her only hope for a normal life.

“These are war crimes, using taxpayer dollars to profit from injuries incurred by people fighting for our freedom,” Barcklay says.

Although she is a U.S. Army veteran, Barcklay, 40, was injured as a civilian working for Blackwater, the private security contractor now known as Xe Services. She and thousands of other civilian employees injured in the defense of their nation have had to navigate an often unresponsive private insurance system.

Xe’s insurance carrier has so far denied Barcklay expensive inpatient treatment known as cognitive rehabilitation therapy, which was recommend by eight Spokane area physicians and mental health care providers.

She suffers from traumatic brain injury, the signature wound of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, for which thousands of U.S. soldiers are receiving care in military or Department of Veterans Affairs facilities. Like many of them, she continues to endure seizures, memory loss, headaches, tremors and problems with her balance that prevent her from returning to work.

Under the Defense Base Act of 1941, defense contractors must provide medical and disability insurance for their workers in war zones. The premiums are included in the companies’ contract with the Department of Defense.

There have been nearly 56,000 such claims for injuries or deaths from the start of the Iraq war to 2009. That year, a congressional investigation found that insurance companies had collected $1.5 billion in premiums, while they paid out about $900 million in compensation and expenses.

Another World War II-era law, the War Hazards Compensation Act, reimburses the employer or insurer for injuries or death to a worker caused by an act of war. The insurer is reimbursed by the taxpayers for 100 percent of the claim, plus 15 percent for administrative costs. From 2003 to 2010, the federal government paid more to insurers for expenses, $19.7 million, than it paid in compensation, $12.1 million, to claimants under the act.

More than three-quarters of the Defense Base Act claims were handled by American International Group, which was rescued in 2008 by the U.S. government in the largest corporate bailout in history.

An AIG subsidiary, Insurance Company of the State of Pennsylvania-Chartis WorldSource, took months to authorize a neurological evaluation for Barcklay. Now Chartis is refusing to pay for her inpatient treatment.

“Frankly, I am appalled at how many obstacles have been placed in the way of her receiving the treatment she needs,” Spokane neuropsychologist Winifred Daisley wrote in a December letter to Chartis case manager Debra Ragan.

Marie Ali, a Chartis spokeswoman, said she could not comment on individual claims but that the company “is committed to handling every claim professionally, ethically and fairly.”

“We provide the highest level of service to our insureds, which includes the prompt adjudication and payment of claims.”

A spokesman for Xe Services said, “The company has worked diligently with the insurance provider to help ensure Ms. Barcklay receives the level of care and treatment she needs.”

Please read the entire story here

See Also

More Than 70 Members of Congress Demand Cognitive Treatment for Troops With Traumatic Brain Injuries

by T Christian Miller from his series at ProPublica Brain Wars

Afghan bomb victim, Chris Fleming, hunts down new life

by Wally Spiers at BND.com

After his legs were damaged in an explosion in Afghanistan, Chris Fleming couldn’t have imagined a normal life, much less a hunting adventure in the wilds of New Mexico.

But in December, the former Collinsville resident found himself hiking through mountains and hills on his new legs, shooting a trophy elk courtesy of the Illinois Wild Turkey Federation.

Fleming, 28, is a 2000 Collinsville High School graduate and spent eight years in the U.S. Marines. Then he signed on as a security specialist with a private contractor and went to work in Afghanistan.

On June 25, 2009, the truck he was riding in struck an improvised explosive device. The next thing he knew, he was laying in the back of a pickup, badly bleeding. Medical workers quickly stabilized him and had him flown back to the United States in hopes of saving his remaining foot.

But it had to be amputated, and he was left to learn to walk again using artificial legs.

Fleming said he stayed in the Collinsville home of his mom, Pat Fleming, while he was getting medical treatment and new legs. He also was getting a new lease on life with support from family and friends.

“After I was injured, I was really depressed,” Chris Fleming said. “I was down and out and venting to my buddies.”

But plenty of people offered support, and he made it his mission to get better.

He has a website on www.caringbridge.org, (type chrisfleming in the “visit a website” space). It is packed with pictures both of the incident and of his recovery, includes pictures of his new legs and a race between him in a wheelchair and his mom and son, Hunter, on a riding lawn mower.  Please see the entire story here

Dwight Pruitt Contractor Back in Wichita After Fall From Helicopter

By Deb Gruver at The Wichita Eagle

Dwight Pruitt doesn’t remember anything about the day he fell 15 feet off a Black Hawk helicopter in Iraq, crushing his skull and breaking his body.

But if he could, he’d realize what a long journey he took to Via Christi Rehabilitation Hospital in Wichita.

The sheet metal mechanic originally from Riverdale, north of Wellington, had been working as a military contractor for six years when he fell. He’d survived mortar attacks at Joint Base Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, and the landscape of war.

What nearly ended his life was a simple fall that could have happened anywhere.

Pruitt, 65, worked on Black Hawks repairing cracks. He fell off one Dec. 13 or 14 —he’s not sure exactly when.

He knows that he landed on his head on concrete.

“It didn’t flex much when I hit it,” he joked about the concrete.

He knows that he was flown to Afghanistan, where doctors relieved swelling on his brain. Then, he woke up in Germany. He couldn’t talk. His first communication was squeezing a doctor’s hand and wiggling his toes.

“They treated me like I was solid gold,” he said of the doctors at the military hospital.

Meanwhile, a medical team at Via Christi worked to get Pruitt home.

The logistics, wrote Via Christi dispatcher Becky Garwood in an e-mail, involved several communications between Via Christi doctors and Pruitt’s doctors in Germany, a transfer nurse coordinator in Canada and Via Christi’s nursing and bed placement staff, and a Canadian flight service dispatcher and flight service and customs workers at Wichita Mid-Continent Airport. Pruitt’s flight stopped in Iceland and Ontario.

A transport team from Via Christi met him at Mid-Continent when he landed in Wichita.

“This was in every way an international effort, involving a hospital in Germany and a flight service from Canada,” Garwood said. “It was complicated by weather delays and a very long overnight flight originating in Saarbrucken, Germany.” Pruitt arrived at Via Christi Hospital on St. Francis on Dec. 23 and then was admitted to the rehabilitation hospital on North Rock Road on Dec. 28.  Please read the entire story here

Winlom Woods, Injured Contractor with Traumatic Brain Injury gets help

Acres of Hope is Lisa Alberte’s effort to restore life after brain injuries

Lisa Alberte and Winlom Woods take a walk at Acres of Hope and Aspirations, a home and farm in Muskego that helps people with brain injuries and children with special needs, which is owned and operated by Alberte. Woods suffered a brain injury when he was shot in the head in Iraq; the bullet remains lodged in his brain.

by Mike Johnson of the Journal Sentinal

Muskego - A nearly 5-acre compound nestled in a rural area of Muskego is a beacon of hope for people living with brain injuries.

Nurse Lisa K. Alberte started Acres of Hope and Aspirations in May after years of working with those who suffered brain injuries and seeing the toll the injuries took on them.

Some have lost their ability to work. Some have seen their marriages end in divorce. Some can no longer drive.

“I listened to my patients cry. I listened to my patients lose everything,” Alberte said.

She thought: “There needs to be more out there. Be the change you want to see in the world.”

So she plowed her heart into Acres of Hope, a home and mini-farm where she and others provide care, vocational rehabilitation, cognitive skills training and safety training to those living with brain injuries. The organization also helps children with special needs.

Alberte and Acres of Hope also are helping Winlom Woods, 36, of Milwaukee, who was shot in the head July 15, 2006, by a sniper in Iraq while working for a defense contractor.

Woods, who served in the Army National Guard, starts telling what he was doing before he got shot, but he momentarily can’t recall the specifics. He snaps his fingers several times and remembers.

“I was riding in the bobtail (truck). I was the person who rescued people if something happened to them.

“I can’t remember what happened, but I know I got shot. I got shot in the right ear and it got lodged in the middle of my brain,” Woods said.

The bullet is still there.

Alberte, who won a nurse of the year award in 2008, has been working with Woods for some time now.

“I’ve stood by him when most people have given up. I helped put his life back together. Helped him get a relationship back with his children because he didn’t have that for almost two years after being shot. Helped set him up with 24-hour supervision – supportive living,” she said.

“We try to go out and have fun in the summer. We’ve taken him on a boat ride and some convertible rides. He deserves to have the best quality of life possible. We’ve gone to the zoo, the library, movies. We do a lot of different community integration so he can feel like a whole person again.”

The above are excerpts from this excellent story.  Please read the entire story here

S.C. veterans and contractors can proceed with lawsuit over Iraq, Afghanistan burn-pits

Alex Harley of Goose Creek was exposed to burn pits while serving as a defense contractor in Iraq and now is part of a class-action lawsuit.

More than a dozen South Carolina veterans and defense contractors who allege their exposure to noxious fumes from burning waste dumps in Iraq and Afghanistan led to grievous health issues may proceed with their class-action lawsuit, a U.S. District judge ruled recently.

The suit, filed in South Carolina in June 2009, is among 43 suits across the country that allege fumes from “burn pits” caused cancer, respiratory problems and other illnesses.

Alex Harley of Goose Creek is among the Palmetto State’s plaintiffs.

The 34-year-old father had a clean bill of health before leaving for work as a contractor in Iraq in 2006. Harley was exposed to what he called the “indescribably horrific” fumes during the course of his work and returned to the U.S. with myriad health problems.

“They check you out completely before they send you over there,” he said. “I was completely healthy before I went. Now, I can’t work. I can’t fish. I can’t play backyard football. I can’t do any of the things I used to do.”

Plaintiffs in the 43 cases say Texas-based defense contractors ignored the terms of their government contracts requiring them to safely dispose of waste, and instead burned everything from tires to human body parts in massive pits.

The Houston contractors, KBR Inc. and Halliburton Co., who received billions of dollars from the federal government, deny the allegations and involvement.  Please read the entire story here

AIG, CNA, ACE the Terror of the DBA Insurance Industry

From an Injured Ally

Today we remember those killed in the attack on the USA by a group of extremists. Some of us from foreign lands at the bequest of our political masters stepped forward to join the fight against these terrorists. After fighting as part of our armed forces to end the war on terror some of us stepped forward yet again on private contracts to support the war on terror.

Yes we were well paid but if you consider what we earned it is nowhere near what the attorneys or the heads of the insurances companies get paid,  forget the bonuses,  just look at the salaries.

Yet when injured we face the terror of the insurance industry with no support from the political masters who went to war to prevent this terror.

LET US TAKE A MOMENT TO REMEMBER THOSE INJURED AND ABANDONED BY THE PEOPLE SIGNED TO PROTECT US FROM THE ABUSE WE NOW FACE FROM THE CORRUPT AMERICAN INSURANCE INDUSTRY.

YOU STAND AT GROUND ZERO SPOUT ON TV ABOUT THE RIGHT AND WRONGS YET CONTINUE TO ALLOW US TO SUFFER SO A FEW CAN PROFIT AT OUR SACRIFICE IN SUPPORT OF YOUR WAR.

THE WORLD IS WATCHING

HOW CAN YOU SAY FREEDOM AND JUSTICE TO THE WORLD  WHEN YOU ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN?

SIT DOWN SHUT UP

STOP THE SOUND BITE

TELL THE TRUTH

DON’T STAND THERE WITH A TEAR IN YOUR EYE AND AN INSURANCE COMPANY LOBBIEST IN YOUR POCKET BECAUSE THAT MAKES YOU NO BETTER THAN THEM.