A newly installed service line offers the Operation Iraqi Freedom Dining Facility at Fort Hood, Texas, a refreshed serving area designed to improve meal flow and provide a more efficient dining experience. (Janecze Wright/U.S. Army)
A Fort Hood dining facility closed two months ago because of a roach infestation reopened Monday morning after extensive renovations, replacement of cooking equipment and a deep cleaning that included all pipes and plumbing.
“This will never happen again with the plan we have in place to continue going forward,” Fort Hood Garrison Command Sgt. Maj. Loyd Rhoades said Friday. “We have identified some major issues that we had, some gaps in our swing, that we have fixed.”
The Operation Iraqi Freedom dining facility closed July 22 after a video surfaced on social media that showed a significant number of bugs crawling on walls around food preparation surfaces. A note from the person who released the video anonymously stated “the higher ups won’t shut down the building to bomb the building.”
Lt. Col. Matt McMillan, spokesman for III Corps and Fort Hood, said that officials have focused not on identifying who released the video but on solving the problem. He declined to release the specific issues and gaps Rhoades mentioned or the related investigation.
New stoves improve efficiency and support meal preparation at the Operation Iraqi Freedom Memorial Dining Facility at Fort Hood, Texas. (Janecze Wright/U.S. Army)
Instead, officials offered a conversation on the more than $130,000 worth of work to reopen the facility that occurred over the last eight weeks and what was done to clear the building of pests, clean it and get it back open with confidence. The dining facility had been passing all routine health inspections, so the work also included making sure that the other seven dining facilities on base weren’t hiding similar problems.
In the days before the video was released, officials did place bait for pests, said Lt. Col. Jeff Pierre-Louis, the garrison command executive officer. Unknown to anyone, the building had a leak within a wall that had become a habitat for roaches. What formed in that wall was a “complex pest ecosystem,” he said.
Combined with peak summer temperatures and plenty of food around, the problem came to a head in July.
After the closure, officials established an assessment team with public works, food managers, preventive medicine, environmental health and entomology, said Sgt. Maj. Kresassidy McKinney, III Corps chief culinary manager. She also served on the team, which met weekly alongside pest control.
They flushed all the pipes and grease traps with a high-pressure cleaning known as “hydro-jetting,” she said.
“Being able to elevate the cleaning process to that allowed us to get a better eye on where some of the concerns lied,” McKinney said.
A new fryer adds upgraded cooking capacity to the Operation Iraqi Freedom Memorial Dining Facility at Fort Hood, Texas, helping streamline food preparation and service. (Janecze Wright/U.S. Army)
All Fort Hood dining facilities will get this type of cleaning going forward.
Once the cleaning was complete and the infestation cleared, McKinney said they replaced any equipment that had a cooking surface, as well refrigerators and “anywhere where you can get visitors that are unwanted.”
Across Fort Hood, cooks and kitchen managers went through training about routine cleaning and procedures and reinforcing how to elevate concerns soldiers may see in a facility, McKinney said.
“We have messaged to the soldier that when you see something wrong, don’t be afraid to pause to articulate that so we can get after the matter sooner than later,” she said.
Rhoades echoed the importance of the education piece.
“If we skip that, then what do they know? How do they report? What are they looking for? I think them understanding what to report, what to look for, and how to look for it and how to annotate it, I firmly believe that we will go forward without another mishap or another infestation in any of our [dining facilities],” he said.
The menu for the dining facility’s reopening included an omelet and pancake bar for breakfast, honey ginger salmon and vegetable lo mein for lunch, and Swiss steak and cheese tortellini for dinner.
The outside of the Operation Iraqi Freedom Dining Facility boasts a refreshed exterior ahead of the reopening Sept. 21, 2026, at Fort Hood, Texas. (Janecze Wright/U.S. Army)
