(The Center Square) – In the spring of 2007, U.S. Army Capt. Ben Richards was serving in Iraq when the eight-ton armored vehicle he was traveling in was struck by a suicide bomber in a sedan loaded with 200 pounds of explosives.

The five-member crew all survived; the Stryker was destroyed.

“We were all able to walk out,” Richards, a West Point graduate, recalled in an interview with The Center Square. “We are all pretty wobbly. There was a period during the blast when I was temporarily unconscious.”

The U.S. Army at the time had not yet fully recognized the potential long-term impact of traumatic brain injury, Richards said.

When he returned to the forward operating base, Richards had a post-blast assessment by doctors.

“I was not able to walk straight,” he recalled. “I was wobbling around several hours after the blast and I couldn’t see straight.”

Despite the injuries, Richards went immediately back into the fight.

“I was a troop commander and you don’t just take a knee lightly when you are a leader,” Richards explained.

The unit set out on another operation the day after the suicide bomber attack. The soldiers engaged in firefights as Richards was struggling to maintain consciousness from his earlier head injuries.

“I was actually passing out during these little skirmish engagements,” said Richards.

During the battles, Richards remembers his radioman shaking him to wake him up, saying, “Sir, they are shooting at us, they are shooting at us!”

Richards was not alone. He estimates that more than 90% of the soldiers serving in his command had at least one traumatic brain injury largely because of the abundance of improvised explosive devices in the roadways and other locations. Many of those soldiers also returned to the battlefield despite their injuries.

Richards overcame years of hardship and pain before finding a solution – hyperbaric oxygen treatment therapy, colloquially known as HBOT – that finally worked for him.

After Richard’s tour was over, he returned to the United States to his wife and three children. He describes his condition as “a complete mess.”

The first night home, he had a nightmare and literally threw his wife out of bed, thinking she was an enemy soldier. His wife cried and urged him to get help.

The military guidance at the time was not to seek mental health services for at least three months, unless suicidal. The thinking was that post-traumatic stress syndrome would not surface for at least that long after a soldier was out of combat.

Despite debilitating headaches and difficulty sleeping, Richards remained in a command position for another eight months but remembers that he did a “horrible, horrible job.”

He was eventually diagnosed with both a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, commonly called PTSD.

In civilian life, his brain still perceived constant threats all around him. The traumatic brain injury made it difficult to process the threats in a rational way. In combat, the brain often overcomes fear with anger – someone is shooting at you and that makes you mad. As a civilian, that anger could instead be directed at friends and family members – not a positive outcome.

Lack of sleep and constant headaches didn’t help matters.

Richards went to counseling, but there was no mindset in the military at the time about chronic brain injuries, Richards said. The thinking was that the brain would heal itself over time.

He could not afford financially to take a medical retirement, with three children and a wife to support.

He was thrilled, however, when he was accepted for a teaching job at his alma mater, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Then, the couple had a fourth child.

At West Point, doctors officially diagnosed Richards as having a traumatic brain injury. They tried new medications, but the side effects were strong. But the tide was changing with an increased awareness of combat brain injuries.

In 2010, the Army opened the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, a traumatic brain injury center, in Bethesda, Md. Richards was admitted.

“The Intrepid Center was incredible,” he said.

After a three-week evaluation, doctors developed a comprehensive treatment program for Richards. It was then clear that his brain injury was so severe that he was not medically fit for duty so he took a medical retirement from the Army.

The family could not afford to continue living in New York so they moved to Council Bluffs, Iowa, to be closer to Richards’ in-laws.

In 2012, he learned about HBOT therapy. He travelled to New Orleans for treatment, although he was initially skeptical because doctors at the Intrepid Center had warned that healing from traumatic brain injuries was rare after two years had passed. Richards was now five years out from his injury.

When Richards took the first treatment, breathing 100% oxygen for an hour inside a special chamber, he really didn’t notice much difference in the way he felt.

After 20 treatments, spaced out over a month, he did begin to notice a difference.

He woke up one morning and realized that he had finally had a good night’s sleep, the first time in about five years. He noticed that the constant pain in his head and muscles had also subsided.

“And then I realized that I was happy,” recalled Richards, who now lives in Oreille County in Washington. “Because I had not been feeling those emotions for so long, it was euphoric. I had forgotten what it felt like to be happy.”

He did 80 treatments initially and continues to get occasional treatments. He remains a big believer in the healing power of HBOT treatments, particularly for combat veterans who have suffered brain injuries.

For the Department of Veterans Affairs, there is still a need of change from the Department of Defense led by Secretary Pete Hegseth in order to help other veterans through the VA. PTSD and TBI each are treated as mental illness rather than injury. Until the VA gets a change from Hegseth or the administration, HBOT won’t be available to veterans at the VA.

U.S. Rep. Dr. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., in each of the last four Congresses, has proposed a pilot program furnishing HBOT at the VA. The Veterans Affairs subcommittee in the House moved it March 25 to the full committee and a mark-up session was held May 6.

“I’m not a special case,” he said. “My outcome was average in the amount of improvement I had. It’s not an outlier.”

Today’s round of questions, my smart-aleck replies and the real answers:

Question: It has now been over three months since Costco submitted its plans for a new store in Asheville (Enka), but I can’t find any information on the status of the application. Has the city made any progress at all on the application? How can something like this go on for so long without even a hint of information leaking out? Can The Watchdog sniff out a progress report?

My answer: My sniffer tends to get sidetracked by craft beer and a good smashburger, but I’ll try.

Real answer: Asheville Watchdog broke the news of Costco submitting plans to the city back in early March, but it looks like the project is idle for now.

Asheville City Council Member Sage Turner posted to the social media platform Nextdoor this week that Costco does not have an active application right now.

“Costco requested what’s called a pre-application meeting with city staff earlier this year,” Turner posted. “The process is meant to help development understand and navigate the review and approval process. Costco has not taken steps since. This means there is not an active application to build a Costco at this time.”

Will Palmquist, principal planner with the city’s Planning & Urban Design department, said Thursday, “We have not yet received a formal development application for the project. The project applicant did schedule another TRC-pre application meeting for July 2 to informally review concept plans for the project.”

So that’s a good sign. The TRC is the Technical Review Committee, an early step in the approval process. Previously, Palmquist said the project would require a conditional zoning, as it’s more than 100,000 square feet.

After the TRC review, it would go to the Planning & Zoning Commission. The commission’s recommendation would be forwarded to City Council for the final decision.

Plans on file with the city show the Costco situated on 25 acres within Enka Commerce Park, with 839 parking spaces. The plans also show the nearby historic Enka clock tower, which will be preserved.

A Costco spokesperson sent me the company’s boilerplate response to my most recent query about their plans.

“Unfortunately, it is our company policy to not comment regarding future Costco warehouses until we are ready to share details about the new location (usually 2-3 months in advance),” the spokesperson said, suggesting I check Costco’s website for updates. 

That site, which lists the names and dates of upcoming locations, does not include Asheville. 

Fletcher Partners is the development company that owns and has developed much of Enka Commerce Park. Partner Martin Lewis did not respond to a request for comment for this update.

Turner said the idleness does not necessarily mean Costco has scrapped its plans.

“We don’t know if they’ll return and apply officially,” Turner wrote. “They could! And they might not. They issued a site plan and did some design work; that’s a good sign.”

Turner also noted that, “The property owner also plays a role; they could be working on their end of the deal ahead of applying.”

Turner acknowledged that thousands of local residents expressed their excitement about Costco submitting plans, as customers now have to drive to Spartanburg, South Carolina, for the nearest store and an Asheville location has been rumored for decades.

‘If and when I learn anything more, I’ll share another update,” Turner wrote.

Question: We ordered a bear-proof can from FCC Environmental Services as soon as they took over the waste contract, the first of January. We have placed at least a dozen calls to 828-820-7022 and have spoken with their representatives, who have assured us that once the containers were delivered, we would receive one. It is now June 17 and nothing has been delivered. We have been told they were back ordered. They have put us to a supervisor who never answered and have also assured us that we should be receiving it within the week once they received them. We have bears up here on the mountain, frequently in our yard and have attacked our dog, and are quite good at getting into trash. Please help us obtain a bear-proof can, which we told them we would pay for.

My answer: I’m pretty sure we’re going to find a huge cache of bear-proof cans at the Regional Bear Denning Headquarters somewhere in Fairview. These are smart animals, you know.

Real answer: The good news is that FCC Environmental does have enough bear carts in stock now, according to Kurt Dutton, FCC’s operations manager in Asheville.

“The issue that we’re running into is we are backed up with delivering carts (and) removing carts due to a shortage of drivers right now,” Dutton told me Tuesday. “We have just filled four positions, and we have two more open requisitions, and one of those is for our container delivery driver to fill that position.”

“And once we have those two positions filled — one is a rear load and one is a container delivery driver — we will be fully staffed,” Dutton continued. “And then I do not see an issue with getting carts delivered, removed, etc.”

As I wrote in late May, FCC has been struggling with customer service since taking over garbage pickup in Buncombe County in January from Waste Pro. 

Dutton said FCC has been working on the call center issues, too. When a call goes into the call center, the center emails staff in Asheville about the issue. 

“Whether it’s a bear cart or a regular cart or recycle or a missed pickup — whatever it might be — they email that to us, and then we take care of it from there,” Dutton said.

Meanwhile, let’s hope they get all the bear carts out there. We have a lot of hungry ursines around these parts.

Question: The Asheville Police Department and the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office provide good information about local crime on their respective websites. A couple of weeks ago, both websites stopped publishing booking photos (mugshots). This takes away some important information from the public. A quick Google search says that booking photos are public records. What could the reason be for removing them?

My answer: All the bears arrested for pilfering bear-proof trash cans looked remarkably alike, so law enforcement had to shut down the site to conduct more detailed bear facial scanning. 

Real answer: This one revolved around a temporary technology glitch with the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office website, which provides the mugshots for its arrestees as well as APD’s. APD spokesperson Rick Rice said the Sheriff’s Office site was experiencing “technical difficulties,” but mugshots are back in place.

A quick check of the Detention Center webpage on Thursday showed most are back up, although I’ll note there was one humorous mugshot of a blank cinder block wall. Some camouflage that guy was rockin’!

Asheville Watchdog welcomes thoughtful reader comments on this story, which has been republished on our Facebook page. Please submit your comments there.

Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Got a question? Send it to John Boyle at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org or 828-337-0941. His Answer Man columns appear each Tuesday and Friday. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

Related