USS Bonhomme Richard Burns: A Victim Of Lax Fire Safety Practices
A huge fireplace, probable due to lax fire safety practices all through pier-facet renovation, ravaged the USABonhomme Richard (LHD-6) on Sunday, Maintaining the line against a resurgent China, and the lack of this multibillion-dollar ship—which appears in all likelihood—might be felt in the course of the fleet.
The fireplace, pronounced at about 8:30 AM on Sunday, was, seven hours later, nevertheless burning, and could but burn for some time. The deliver, undergoing upkeep in San Diego, had about one hundred sixty sailors aboard at the time of the incident. Eighteen have reportedly been dispatched to the health facility for non-life-threatening injuries. While the quantity of the damage is unknown, the hearth has been intense sufficient to buckle structural steel and soften the tires on motors parked at the flight deck. Given the volume of the damage, the ship will, at a minimum, be out of service for years, and can be written off as a complete loss.
Shipyard Fires Are Entirely Preventable
While the cause of the fireplace is below investigation, we already realize that shipyard fires are serious trouble for the U.S. Navy proper now. protection over the last several months, and, as opposed to making changes, the U.S. Navy seems to have chosen to ignore the hassle, happier to gloat and factor arms as shipyard fires almost sank Russia’s Admiral Kuznetsov in 2019 and certainly one of China’s new Type 0.5 big-deck amphibious attack ships in advance near calls—is inexplicable and inexcusable. Barring very uncommon circumstances, the shipyard fire that is currently eating the Bonhomme Richard is in all likelihood to have been completely and absolutely avoidable.
Pier-aspect fires are rare whilst maintainers follow basic fire prevention practices.
But, despite more than one warnings over the past several years, the U.S. Navy clearly nevertheless has a critical hassle has laboured to reset training for delivering dealing with after two deadly accidents in 2017, the Navy has taken an arguably more materiel loss in avoidable shipyard injuries on the grounds that 2012 and has exhibited little electricity weighed down by using water pumped aboard via firefighters, the Navy is discovering a hard fact approximately hearth safety. Fires and accidents will preserve happening till both ships sink, sailors die, or somebody, somewhere in the leadership chain, gets deadly critical approximately prevention. If this incident is recognized as being caused by a departure from basic, simple—albeit time-ingesting hearth protection rules, all of us from admirals on down need to be without delay proven the door.
It is not just like the Navy hasn’t been warned. The hearth at the USS Bonhomme Richard broke out—in an ironic note—just across the pier from the Fitzgerald (DDG 62), freshly lower back from a multi-year refit after a fatal 2017 collision at sea. During that ship’s multi-12 months refit, the U.S.Fitzgerald’s captain grew so worried approximately fireplace safety practices that he wrote a right away leaked memo for the file noting greater than 15 separate fire protection incidents in the yard, including “poorly staffed hearth watches, a smouldering deck, combustible cloth catching on the hearth, the invention of formerly unreported burnt-cable spot fires and fires that melted equipment.” While a good deal of the Navy specializes in lethality and in surviving the battlefield, it'll be exciting to look if the skipper of the USABonhomme Richard—itself sparkling from a $250 million refit to operate next-era F-35B fighter jets—took a similar hobby in securing his deliver while beneath protection.
Pier-aspect Fires Have Sunk A U.S. Fleet
The best aspect mariners fear greater than a fire at sea is a hearth in a refitting vessel. A shipyard refit is one in every of the most perilous instances for a vessel. In a refit, safety-oriented ship structures are often shut down, essential passageways are blocked via cables, pallets and another flammable materiel as people—who are frequently pressured and pressed for time—carry out a whole lot of maintenance obligations with an eye fixed for reducing corners. In such an environment, poor protection practices can result in a catastrophe.
If this modern hearth is found to be an avoidable incident, consequences want to be meted out hastily at each degree of the command chain. The Navy has misplaced too many ships and swept too many egregious and latest instances of shipyard/pier-side brush aside for hearth protection below the rung. Accidents do take place, however, if willful push aside for fundamental hearth safety exercise is the motive of this current debacle, then it is time to make an instance of the leaders that allowed this incident to occur on their watch. It is the simplest manner to get approximately focusing the carrier’s attention at the removal of avoidable shipyard injuries.
Only consistent leadership will stop this waterfront carnage. Without leadership, these days, away too many waterfront employees are some distance too equipped to skip over authoritative, informed safety steering and do things that they shouldn’t do. And if Navy management is content material to appearance the other way, then Congress needs to act to recognition the Navy’s interest approximately preservation employees at domestic sinking America’s precious fleet.