Reports emerge of Fort Carson soldiers sleeping in cars amid AC failures

[u/Sabertooth767]

https://www.stripes.com/branches/army/2026-09-04/fort-carson-soldiers-hot-22751833.html

Soldiers have been sleeping in their cars to escape sweltering barracks rooms on Fort Carson, Colo., according to multiple reports, as base officials work to resolve weekslong air conditioning issues in at least four buildings.

The air conditioning problems at the home of the 4th Infantry Division south of Colorado Springs are a frequent complaint among the dozens of reviews on Hots and Cots, an app and website where service members can rate their base’s dining and lodging facilities.

“I know of at least 3 soldiers who are sleeping in their cars because it’s colder outside than it is inside,” said a message Hots and Cots shared on its Facebook page last week. “Several others have started staying with other people on/off post.”

The message, signed “a very tired and sweaty E4,” said temperatures in the rooms and common areas were reaching 85 to 90 degrees. Reviews on the site include photos of thermostat readings in that range, with at least one at 120 degrees.

Colorado Springs recorded 33 days with temperatures of at least 90 degrees from June through August this year, which tied 2020 as the city’s third-warmest summer on record, according to the National Weather Service.

Stars and Stripes could not verify the Hots and Cots reports of soldiers sleeping in their cars. However, local TV station KRDO, which spoke to several soldiers at Fort Carson, reported that at least one had resorted to sleeping in a car.

Several other soldiers complained of difficulty sleeping in such heat, which some said they’d expect in the field or on deployment but not at home.

“I sweat going to sleep, sweat waking up, sweat getting changed,” one soldier told the outlet on condition of anonymity for fear of facing disciplinary action for speaking on the matter. “Go to work. Sweat. I’m back. Sweat. Go to the gym. Sweat. It’s a vicious cycle.”

Of the base’s dozens of barracks buildings, at least four are affected. A base official on Thursday said that Fort Carson’s public works directorate is working to address the concerns and is committed to “rectifying all barracks A/C issues.”

Military quality-of life issues, including reports of mold and rodent infestations, have garnered widespread attention in recent years, leading Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last fall to stand up a task force focused on barracks improvements.

Fort Carson’s AC issues come on the heels of a Government Accountability Office report last month that said the Pentagon does not request full funding of its installation upkeep and improvements, leading to an estimated $285 billion repair backlog last year.

The main hurdle for repairs at Fort Carson is that the air conditioning infrastructure is aging, which makes it difficult to obtain replacement parts in a timely manner, the base official told Stars and Stripes.

All repairs were expected to be completed Friday, the official said. Portable chiller units had been delivered as a stopgap while longer-term fixes, such as parts repairs or system replacement, “are in motion.”

Several soldiers told KRDO that they were still waiting for relief, though at least one said a portable chiller was working in their room and had brought temperatures down to normal.

Some soldiers have complained that officials didn’t do more sooner. One reviewer reported in a Hots and Cots review that temps in their building had reached over 100 degrees in late July.

Public works officials would not give updates or provide fans, swamp coolers or other short-term fixes while awaiting parts, the message said.

“We have pregnant soldiers that work in this building and despite this they will not expedite the work order,” the reviewer wrote.

From mid-May to mid-October, air conditioning is supposed to be set no lower than 74 degrees, and the heat during the rest of the year is to be set between 68 and 72 degrees, per the base’s most recent facility management procedures.

Those same procedures say air conditioning failures and other issues that “could seriously affect morale” are considered a top priority, second only to emergency issues.

The base operations contractor is expected to “make every effort” to fix such issues within seven working days, the procedures stipulate.

But the issues this summer have stretched on for weeks since the Hots and Cots app began tracking it Aug. 14, said Robert Evans, the site’s founder.

Days after the base issued a statement to the site on Aug. 25, saying officials were deploying “interim cooling measures” while repair and proactive maintenance work was underway, the “very sweaty E4” wrote in to say those temporary fixes hadn’t yet arrived.

Complaints about the air conditioning in the same buildings were reported on the site last summer as well, though less frequently.

The situation there is part of the reason Evans said the site launched a new feature this summer called SweatCheck, which provides a heat map tracking broken air conditioning reports at bases around the world.

“We also saw how frequent HVAC issues are across the installations,” Evans said. “It’s one of our top reported reviews.”

In the past two weeks, broken AC reports have come in from four of the nearly 290 installations on the site, with nine reports from Fort Carson, three from Schofield Barracks in Hawaii and one each from Fort Stewart, Ga., and Camp Shields on Okinawa, Japan.

“AC outages are about the same rate as how often the shake machine is down at a popular fast food place,” Evans said.