Safety operations within the U.S. military are always paramount, but a recent string of deadly incidents have taken the issue mainstream. The Marines have seen multiple incidents this summer — including the deaths of 15 Marines after their transport plane crashed into a Mississippi field and 3 Marines killed during a crash off Australia’s eastern coast. Well, two new military training incidents are now making headlines. On Wednesday, fifteen more Marines sustained injuries — six of the critical variety — during an exercise at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California. And on Thursday, an explosion at Fort Bragg in North Carolina injured at least 15 Army soldiers.
The New York Times reports that, during the Camp Pendleton incident, the Marines were undergoing training exercises in an Assault Amphibious Vehicle (A.A.V.), which caught fire for reasons that are so far unknown:
The accident happened just after 9:30 a.m. at the base in Southern California, the Marine Corps said in a statement. The Marines, members of the First Marine Division, “were conducting scheduled battalion training” when the vehicle caught fire, the statement said.
Six of the Marines were listed in critical condition and six in serious condition. One other was hospitalized in stable condition, and two were treated on base for minor injuries.
A.A.V.s, also known as Landing Vehicles, have been employed since the 1970s and — as their name would suggest — transport Marines from water to land. The fire’s cause is currently under investigation, and no further comment came forth in an email to the NY Times from the First Marine Division’s public affairs officer First Lt. Paul Gainey.
As for the incident at Fort Bragg, authorities haven’t released many details in the breaking phase of the story. However, local NBC affiliate WRAL reports that all 15 soldiers — members of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command — who were injured in the explosion have been rushed to Womack Army Medical Center via helicopter. The state of their injuries is not known, but we will update this story if and when further details arrive.
As further background, the U.S. Navy recently reshuffled some leadership after multiple warship collisions this year, which resulted in over a dozen sailors losing their lives.
(Via New York Times)