29 Palms Marine Base commissary reopens after rat infestation closure
The commissary at the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center reopened Saturday.
Base officials shut down the commissary for 10 days due to a rat infestation.
Officials addressed the closure by creating a pop-up outdoor sidewalk sale outside of the facility.
The commissary will be open Sunday, October 22, at normal hours from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Officials said it will also be open on Monday, October 23.
The facility provides groceries and other supplies and provisions for military personnel and veterans on and off the base and is open to military only.
Lt. Col. Alisa Wilma, director of health and safety with the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA), said the infestation was found on October 11 to where the commissary was shut down. She said this is the first time ever the Twentynine Palms commissary had been shut down and the first time in 17 years any commissary across the globe had been shut down.
{“url”:”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ/status/920709532623368192″,”author_name”:”Jeremy Chen”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;29 Palms Marine Base commissary closed due to rat infestation. Will have outdoor sale of certain items starting at 1 pm today. &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/KESQ?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;@KESQ&#lt;/a&#gt; &#lt;a href=”https://t.co/n0T9KqRhCp”&#gt;pic.twitter.com/n0T9KqRhCp&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/p&#gt;– Jeremy Chen (@JeremyChenKESQ) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/JeremyChenKESQ/status/920709532623368192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;October 18, 2017&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}
Lt. Col. Wilma estimated about 1,200 people were served by the facility each day. The cause of the infestation remained under investigation.
“We’re working diligently to make that happen,” she said. “We have hope that it will be soon but we will not rush a re-opening at the risk of compromising the safety of our patrons.”
According to Capt. Karen Holliday, the base houses about 6,000 families, many of whom shop at the commissary for essential supplies. She said base officials reached out to local grocery stores to stock up on inventory in case the usual commissary customers wanted fresh food, especially the retired veteran population.
“They’re on fixed incomes,” she said. “Some people drive hundreds of miles away to get to this commissary in order to utilize their retiree benefits.”
A pop-up outdoor sidewalk sale was set up outside the facility Monday afternoon with non-perishable goods available from the commissary. they included bottled water, sodas, and paper plates. No fresh food would be available until it was certified to be safe for consumption by health inspectors. Capt. Holliday said the sidewalk sale would occur from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. everyday until it re-opened.
Bruce Jones, a retired Army soldier living in Twentynine Palms was surprised to hear of the closure.
“Their standards of cleanliness, it’s so much higher than everywhere else,” he said. “It surprised us to hear that they were closed.”
Jones said getting fresh food would be an issue as supermarkets such as Stater Bros. were available but appreciated the pop-up sidewalk sale and quick response from the military.
“The military, they jump on things fast and they find a problem and they take care of it quickly,” he said. “That’s a blessing.”
More: I-Team and Stands for You investigations
Find us on Facebook: KESQ News Channel 3 & CBS Local 2
Follow us on Twitter for breaking news updates: @KESQ & @Local2
We’re on Instagram! @KESQ_News_Channel_3 & @CBSLocal2
Noticias en español: Telemundo 15
