{"id":32208,"date":"2023-08-18T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-18T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/serving-those-who-served\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:54:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:54:20","slug":"serving-those-who-served","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/serving-those-who-served\/","title":{"rendered":"Serving those who served"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Janie
Janie Huron, with the Veterans Benefits Administration, works with veteran Chris Burgess on Wednesday during a PACT Act clinic at the Durango Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4031. Burgess was exposed to toxic burn puts while serving in Afghanistan. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Regardless of which war they served in, the branch they served in or the era in which they served, military veterans\u2019 stories of toxic exposure all sound similar.<\/p>\n

Chris Burgess slept next to a burn pit for months after he arrived in Afghanistan in 2004 as a young marine.<\/p>\n

Burn pits were ubiquitous on bases during the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. They were used to dispose of anything <\/a>from human waste to chemicals to munitions. Only later were the fumes from those pits discovered to have had a severe impact on human health.<\/p>\n

On July 2, 1969, Mike Brunk, of Cortez, was deployed to Phan Rang Air Base in Vietnam, where he repaired aircraft instruments. Many of the planes he worked on sprayed Agent Orange<\/a>, a toxic herbicide used to remove foliage used for cover by the enemy. The substance was everywhere, he said, but the impact on the human body was unknown.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody talked about it back then, nobody knew anything about it,\u201d Bunk said.<\/p>\n

\"Veteran
Veteran Mike Brunk, of Cortez, was exposed to Agent Orange while working at an air base in Vietnam. He has high blood pressure, a condition that is now presumed to be linked to his exposure. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Melinda Michael spent 38 years in the Navy. She was aboard a ship coordinating the evacuation and response after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan. Like nearly 70,000 other service members,<\/a> Michael may have been exposed to radiation that is impacting her health.<\/p>\n

All three veterans, and dozens more, attended a claims clinic Wednesday at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4031 in Durango. The clinic brought the resources necessary to develop a disability claims \u2013 the kind of resource that can be hard to access for residents of rural Southwest Colorado \u2013 to the doorstep of the area\u2019s veterans.<\/p>\n

The clinic was designed to assist veterans in compiling claims for the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act \u2013 the PACT Act, signed on Aug. 10, 2022. The law was the single largest expansion of veterans benefits in the history of the Department of Veterans Affairs.<\/p>\n

Until the law\u2019s passage, veterans had to prove a causal link between most health conditions and their service.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you got shot in Iraq, and there\u2019s a record of you getting shot in Iraq by the enemy and you get a Purple Heart, there\u2019s documentation around that, that\u2019s really easy to connect (to health impacts),\u201d said Mike Benton, the commander of VFW Post 4031. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to connect that you stood near a burn pit in Iraq, and that\u2019s why you have asthma.\u201d<\/p>\n

Benton said the PACT Act makes it \u201csignificantly easier\u201d for veterans to access benefits, now that a lengthy list of medical conditions <\/a>are presumed to be linked to service in certain conflicts or regions.<\/p>\n

When he returned from Iraq in 2007, Benton himself applied for disability benefits stemming from breathing problems he was having. He had served in Baghdad, where he was breathing the fumes from explosions and burn pits.<\/p>\n

\"Mary
Mary Vasiloff, an audiologist with Veterans Evaluation Services, works inside the contractor\u2019s mobile examination vehicle. The company has four such vehicles that travel the country so that veterans in rural areas can receive the medical evaluations they need to receive disability compensation. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cThey denied it over and over and over,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When the PACT Act was signed, Benton\u2019s disability benefit immediately jumped to 30% (disability rates vary according to the number of dependents a veteran has; 30% disability equates to $508 to $708 per month).<\/p>\n

It can take months for a veteran to compile all the necessary documentation to submit a claim. At Wednesday\u2019s clinic, the goal was to complete the process in a single day.<\/p>\n

A veteran could show up and check in with a Veterans Benefits Administration representative, who would locate or input their service record and any medical records. Several of the VA\u2019s contractors brought mobile clinic units to the event, so that veterans could get medical evaluations to document any health issues.<\/p>\n

\"Veterans
Veterans living in rural Southwest Colorado had services brought to them on Wednesday during a PACT Act clinic at the Durango Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4031. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cWe try to target small areas like this that don\u2019t have medical examination offices that are brick and mortar sites,\u201d said Heather Osborne, a management analyst with the Medical Disability Examination Office.<\/p>\n

Veterans Evaluation Services, one of the VA\u2019s contractors, arrived with one of the company\u2019s four mobile units. The bus has facilities to conduct general health, audiology and various vision exams, as well as dental X-rays.<\/p>\n

For Brunk, the avionics technician who served in Vietnam, this is not his first go-round seeking benefits.<\/p>\n

He has some health conditions that he suspects could be related to his exposure to Agent Orange. As other veterans at the clinic echoed, Brunk showed up Wednesday because \u201cyou never know.\u201d<\/p>\n

The airman is already receiving disability for his loss of hearing, but not for high blood pressure. The condition is now a presumed to be linked to Agent Orange exposure. The addition of hypertension as a presumptive condition means Brunk is likely to see a bump in his disability benefits.<\/p>\n

\"Maria
Maria Cardenas, a nurse practitioner with Veterans Evaluation Services, works inside an exam room on the company\u2019s mobile examination vehicle. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Like Brunk, Burgess \u2013 the marine who slept next to a burn pit in Afghanistan \u2013 is receiving disability for only some of his injuries.<\/p>\n

He receives 40% disability \u2013 about $730 each month \u2013 of which 10% is connected to hearing damage and 30% is connected to post-traumatic stress disorder.<\/p>\n

But none of that is related to the burn pits.<\/p>\n

Burgess says he has respiratory issues that may be related to his exposure to burn pits or dust particles. If he is diagnosed with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or any number of other respiratory problems, the VA will presume that the cause was his service-related toxin exposure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know we were all exposed to a lot of things, including what we breathed in. And that\u2018s just now starting to take effect,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe we didn\u2019t notice for the first five or 10 years, but now I\u2019m noticing that we have a lot of things in common, we\u2019re all experiencing a lot of the same issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Veterans can file a disability claim on the VA\u2019s website<\/a> and may seek assistance from the La Plata County Veterans Service Officer by calling 759-0117.<\/p>\n

rschafir@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Veterans could compile, complete disability claims at Wednesday\u2019s clinic <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1987,3323,28,184],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-32208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-armed-forces","tag-conflicts-and-war","tag-headlines","tag-veterans-affairs"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32208"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81713,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32208\/revisions\/81713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32208"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=32208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}