And here I thought the whole purpose of shipboard fire fighting was to remain onboard.
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Bonhomme Richard fire
- Thread starter Treetop Flyer
- Start date
I remember going through firefighting school and watching a yellow shirt screw something up in the training evolution and then, at the Chief's direction, stand in front of us and repeatedly hit himself over the head with a clipboard while chanting, "I'm an AB but wish I was a YN." ?
It's different in port than it is underway.
From what Ive gleaned from the articles online it sounds like the onboard fire suppression system was inactive/tagged out either due to work on that system or to facilitate other maintenance and then the duty section tried to get it back online to fight the fire. I'm guessing that getting the system online was more in depth than just flicking one a switch and that it was made harder by the limited personnel of the duty section.
As I mentioned earlier, an in port fire with a weekend duty section is a worst case scenario even with fully operational fire suppression systems. Having systems tagged out and then having other gear in the way only makes a bad situation worse.
Little known fact related to the last Harrier flew off BHR in 2018 before entering the extended upgrade period to operate F-35...the pilot is known to AW as “Squeeze”...he is now working at Pax in PMA-257 (Harrier Program Office) and is my neighbor in Solomons. We were having beers and tacos at his place last night when that factoid came up during our discussion of BHR fiasco. Guess he will forever hold the distinction of last jet to operate from her.
GroundPounder
Well-Known Member
I'll stipulate that I have no experience in this matter, so if there were a " Stupid Questions about Shipboard Fore Control " this question belongs there.
Would it not make sense to pre-position a fire truck with lines set up ready to go when major work is being done? You have the base FD, and even if it was just a truck and three guys, it would be there if you needed it. I know there are manning and cost issues, but it seems like a small price to pay vs. a potential total loss.
I agree that sometimes there are stupid questions that aren't so stupid.
For prepositioning a firetruck and staging any other firefighting gear, all that is part of the of the plan... and the surface navy being the surface navy, they briefed the shit out of this stuff before turning off anything or disconnecting any systems. Whatever happened after that, the plan clearly failed.
Like @Jim123 said there are processes in place to vet, brief, accept and mitigate risk, etc for all types of ship board work. During a normal in port no one is supposed to do hot work without running a hot work chit up to the CDO for review. This chit requires fire watches and other mitigations to address the risks. I've never been on a ship in the yards or an avail so I don't know what the approval process is for something like that and whether there are supposed to be larger mitigations in place. For instance, if you fly an aircraft on pierside you need to get a fire truck on site.
All that said, there's always the possibility that hot work wasn't being conducted and the fire was started another way. On GW that fire started because multiple procedures were broken (if I recall): hazmat was improperly stored and people were smoking in non approved areas where the illegal hazmat was stored. Once you start breaking all the rules all bets are pretty much off.
BLUF:
“...the events onboard the Bonhomme Richard will raise questions in the minds of our Navy’s sailors, our allies, and our competitors as to whether the U.S. Navy is still fit to fight a war if a major capital vessel can catch fire and gut itself while tied to a pier at a major naval base in one of the nation’s largest modern cities. The Navy appears broken in ways that the nation’s leaders are only now beginning to understand.”
Yes he’s “controversial”, but is this a bad take?
www.nationalreview.com
“...the events onboard the Bonhomme Richard will raise questions in the minds of our Navy’s sailors, our allies, and our competitors as to whether the U.S. Navy is still fit to fight a war if a major capital vessel can catch fire and gut itself while tied to a pier at a major naval base in one of the nation’s largest modern cities. The Navy appears broken in ways that the nation’s leaders are only now beginning to understand.”
Yes he’s “controversial”, but is this a bad take?
Burning USS Bonhomme Richard Signals More Trouble for Navy | National Review
The latest incident in a long line of recent trouble suggests continued internal weakness.
www.nationalreview.com
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
The defense from fire generally is as follows:
1) Prevention. This is the most significant step. Proper stowage of flammable materials, fix oil leaks, using flame resistant materials in ship's construction, safety precautions and permissions processes for work that creates a fire risk, and most importantly - training, certification, and supervision to make sure those processes are executed.
Pier side this permission resides on two levels: first, the CO. Second, the OIC of the IMA who is supposed to holistically look at risky evolutions scheduled simultaneously on the Safety of Ship Maintenance Item List (SOSMIL). That review is supposed to identify conflicts (like hot work with the suppression system down) and put additional mitigations in place. In the yards it typically resides with the SY and they each have their own processes for certifying the work area and workers.
2) Rapid response(first 5 minutes). In port this is the duty section and typically executed with portable extinguishers while breaking out hoses and donning FFEs for sustained response.
A sobering fact during an upkeep is that the most likely person to find a fire is a civilian worker. Sheer numbers of who's on board. But they're trained to immediately evacuate vice put an extinguisher on it (except hot work fire watches). The biggest impact to losing the Miami was the civilian who smelled smoke pulled the alarm in the space below... By the time personnel responded and realized the fire wasn't there, the actual space was too smoked out to find and fight the fire (EABs tagged out and all SCBAs stowed topside).
3) Sustained response. Using fire hoses and fire teams in FFEs after flashover occurs. Honestly if you get to this point, you're probably screwed. If you're using a topside fire truck, you're definitely screwed. I doubt that a fire truck standing by topside would have changed anything if the crew couldn't rapidly put out the fire in under 2-3 minutes.
I'm not full up round where fire suppression systems fall in that spectrum since we don't have them outside the galley. My guess is #3.
So aside that a fire truck 24/7 would provide very little gain in preventing another incident like this, civilians aren't trained like Navy. They are trained to minimize the spread; the property when they show up is already considered a total loss. They stay outside unless someone needs rescuing. We're trained to go into the space to try to put out the fire because we can't write off the ship as a loss while at sea. Loss of ship means everyone on it dies.
The civilian FFs at PNSY had never step foot on a sub when the Miami fire happened.
You can put a fire truck up there, but it's like making people walk one way in a supermarket to avoid spreading COVID.
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Well put. If she's in a maintenance availability, then her firefighting equipment is likely to be in some state of lay up. From the reports I've read, her firemain (seawater pumped throughout the ship) was tagged out (likely because they were working on it). Also, her AFFF system which piggy backs on the firemain system was also tagged out so there was no way to implement it quickly. Also, older AFFF systems take some effort and time to align all of the valves and get the AFFF mixed properly (it comes in a concentrate like clothing detergent). I'm not sure if they have halon in their engineering spaces (I'm pretty sure they do) and that was likely tagged out as well so it didn't accidentally activate and kill everyone in the spaces doing work.
With hoses and stuff running throughout the ship, then hatches and watertight doors were open and couldn't be shut to establish fire and smoke boundaries. This prevented anywhere near to an adequate firefighting response by the in-port emergency team.
And you're correct, a single fire truck wouldn't have put a dent in that fire.
exNavyOffRec
Well-Known Member
I could see this whole event causing the USN to evaluate how many people are actually needed in a duty section, especially during an availability when hoses prevent doors from being shut.
Let's face it, inport for a few weeks with no WTD being stuck in the open position is a lot different than a maintenance period with all the doors blocked open.
There has been a push to find a better way to increase the numbers of duty sections, this may have just shown us our thinking was wrong.
Your two options are either increasing manning onboard ships or reducing the number of duty sections. One costs money and the other risks personnel never being able to spend any time with their families while in port. The latter is exactly what happened with the minimal manning and all-contractor-performed maintenance on the LCS. While in port on an operational ship, the duty section was stretched so thin between force protection watches, engineering watches, and having to babysit contractors that the crew almost never went home. The only time they spent long periods at home was during the training phase (this was with a three crew rotation) of their crew cycle. During the workups and deployment phases, they essentially lived on the ship. This was one of the leading causes that no one wanted to get assigned to an LCS crew.
The only other option is that we do long maintenance periods (SRA and drydock periods) the way the USCG does them. This would mean we need more EDOs as the crew literally debarks the cutter and it gets handed over to a Coastie EDO analogue who manages the cutter and the crew rotates in TDY duty cycles to assist contractors with assembly/disassembly/configuration of the cutter. This would mean that the Navy would have to accept the risk of essentially handing a ship over to a contractor entirely.
They’ll go with option three: decrease the number of ships and deploy them more. Increased duty section manning will make it easier to control liberty risks in covid hot spots with the ancillary benefit of having more DC personnel onboard during in-port times. No more port calls due to covid risk, keeping them out at sea with more people onboard for longer will actually make things “safer”. Sailors will be forced to stay in because there won’t be jobs on the outside due to the recession so re-enlistment rates will stay the same and big Navy will see that they’ve discovered the new “way forward”.
I mean yeah I’m being sarcastic (sort of), but tell me you can’t see this happening.
I’m on base right now. Dropped off a couple of flight suits for the Airboss. I heard the poor guy was wearing FRVs and that just won’t do. I don’t have any good info about the fire or source but I did see Sailors walking on and off the ship even though there is still some smoldering around the forward superstructure. Forward mast is collapsed and gnarled. She’s listing to starboard, and low on the bow. I asked one of their officers (not Airboss) about their Sailors and the stuff they lost. He recommended making uniform donations to the Navy/Marine Corps Relief Society thrift shop on base. They are making deliveries of replacement uniforms to the BHR Sailors. Now that I think of it, any of us could make an online donation to NMCRS which I plan to do as well. God bless the crew.
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We would run out of ships very quickly. We've already been running our ships too hard and shortening or cancelling maintenance availabilities already. Reducing the amount of ships and upping the OPTEMPO will only make things worse. We need more, cheaper ships such as PCs and OHP-class FFGs that can bring an oversized sensor and strike capability to the fight.