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Monday, August 8, 2005
Enduring a blinding sandstorm
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq — As though searing temperatures, lack of electricity and a violent insurgency were not enough to make the lives of Baghdadis miserable.
Khalid Mohammed/AP
Iraqi police frisk a man as they secure checkpoints during a massive sandstorm Monday.
A blinding sandstorm moved through the Iraqi capital at full force overnight and by Monday morning, an eerie, burnt umber haze had choked the city.
Some described it as a sandstorm of biblical proportions that emptied the city’s busy streets and sent hundreds of gasping Iraqis to local hospitals to seek relief.
The dust also forced the cancellation of a crucial meeting intended to break a deadlock in negotiations over Iraq’s draft constitution.
Meteorologists said a rare air pressure system that settled over Iraq’s western desert was the culprit that dumped sand and talcum-powder fine dust over the entire city.
At Camp Striker, where a majority of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team is based, soldiers found it difficult to see more than 50 feet.
Some had to rethink planned missions because of poor visibility.
Most people covered their eyes and noses and tightly shut entrances to tents, though the efforts in many instances proved futile. Layers of sand and dust forced in by the winds put a coating of the powdery stuff over everything. Brooms and mops were a much-sought commodity Monday. One soldier was spotted beating clouds of dust from a floor rug.
Inches-thick fine sand blanketed the concrete barriers all around the camp.
Dust flared up from the basketball courts every time the ball hit the ground as a few soldiers decided to brave the unkind weather conditions and shoot a few hoops.
The saving grace: Temperatures plummeted into the 80s, a virtual cold wave for Baghdad in August.
It was quieter, too, at Camp Striker, which sits near one end of the Baghdad International Airport. The constant noise of planes and choppers was silenced as the storm stopped flights in and out of the area.
By evening, the winds had died down and the air cleared enough for the brigade to go ahead with its third memorial service for fallen soldiers in the past two weeks.
Monday’s sandstorm was one of the worst in memory. A similar sandstorm slowed the American military advance into southern Iraq during the 2003 invasion.
