USS Bonhomme Richard LHD6 on fire alongside in San Diego

Less than 5% of these flag waving patriots in the USA ever served their country. They just wave the flag and tell people to “honor” it. The heroes that saved the ship put out a fire for God’s sake. I don’t care if you’re Navy, Army, Marine, CG or US Postal Service just putting on a uniform doesn’t make anyone a hero.That’s your job, you volunteered for it and got paid for it just like I did for every job I had in my life, including in the service of my country. Later, I lived thru occasional terrible seas at times to make sure the USA had at various times, cars, plows, oil and plastic shit from China. Does that make me a hero too? NO. If doing your job means you are hero does that make the guy that successfully made my Wendy’ s burger today a hero? I gave him a tip so to me he was my hero :wink:

OK, done with that rant. You’re probably right. If the right contractor with the right connections calls the right congressman they’ll probably repair it for a lot of money and have a grand ceremony afterwards.You just pay the bills.

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It appears it has an aluminum superstructure. How can there be enough left to repair?

This is a great example of armchair quarterbacking

I’m sure he does but the operative point is what questions is he going to ask?

Isn’t there old saying about trial lawyers that they don’t ask questions unless they already know the answer?

I think the questions that don’t get asked are the ones the taxpayer deserves an answer.

Nah that would be too sensible. Fuck the taxpayers build another boat!

Probably more than just one. My crystal ball shows a movement to build more and more similar purpose ships to launch drones and sneaky boats dispersed along a wide sea front because single large targets are too easy to whack.

It kind of reminds me of the Iran-Iraq war where they used hordes of child soldiers as consumables.

The photos of the flight deck and superstructure of the BHR bring to mind the HMS Sheffield where the aluminum superstructure was itself a consumable.

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One of the issues Gilday wants immediate clarity on is whether the commanding officers on the waterfront believe they have enough sailors in their duty sections — a rotating group of sailors from the ship’s crew designated to stay aboard the ship for 24 hours to handle emergencies and stand security watches.

I am curious whether the ‘rotating group of sailors’ was implemented here.

“That includes how our duty sections are manned,” he continued, “whether they are manned with the right talent and at the right numbers; whether the people in those duty sections are fully qualified and able to handle something of a magnitude of Bonhomme Richard; whether or not a ship in maintenance availability with firefighting systems out of commission for maintenance, are there proper mitigations in place to account for that? Do the duty sections need to be increased to be able to execute those mitigations?”

This is with regards to the 2012 fire aboard the sub Miami while it was in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

That investigation found that over time the Navy had gradually and unintentionally accepted higher and higher risk for fire in the industrial environment at the shipyard, when key fixed firefighting systems are deactivated and compartments designed into the ship to create fire boundaries are compromised by hoses, cables and ventilation ducts running through open hatches. The investigation also found that Federal firefighters at the shipyard weren’t adequately trained for shipboard firefighting.

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Oh I don’t like where this is going. I would guess that BHR was in eight-section, ~160 sailors onboard. That should be more than enough people to handle most any problem. When the smoke clears I suspect it will be shown that the fire started in a storeroom or other out-of-the-way part of the ship and grew undetected due to installed monitoring systems being disabled or not promptly investigated. Then, when it was discovered, it was unable to be effectively contained or fought due to systems being tagged out and watertight integrity compromised with all the repair work being done. At which point the entire crew, waterfront, fireboats, and 1500 water bucket drops weren’t enough to put it out until three days later. I don’t know what extra bodies onboard are going to do except be miserable.

So you can collapse BHR to six-section, but what about the small boys? They’re already in six, thanks to all the ridiculous ATFP (security) requirements, which they absolutely should not have to provide in their homeports! They’re going down to four, and the Navy is going back to the 1980s levels of quality of life. It’s a great time to be a SWO! :roll_eyes:

Seeing this happened brought back some memories of my last SY Period. We had quite a lot of trouble getting the Yard to post proper Fire Watches and we were at reduced manning so we were stretched pretty thin. I caught a welder that I had caught more than several times without a Fire Watch. He was welding in an area that had Hydraulic Oil Storage tanks above him that were empty but not gas freed. When I told him to stop, he called his boss man on the radio. When the White Hat showed up, he said “Come on Chief anything that could burn here burned yesterday when we had that fire”. This was the attitude of the yard and my company’s higher ups who would always side with the yard, so I was told to STOP stopping them and DO NOT call safety!

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I don’t know about US Navy ships, but on a lot of ships and boats there is a tendency to forget that watertight doors also serves as fire door/ breaks.
Come to think of it, it is not unusual to see signs on such doors that say; “To be kept closed at sea”.
Fires may occure while in port as well. (In fact they are more frequent while at a shipyard/under repairs)

On a lot of Offshore vessels you’ll find the W/T doors open bow to stern (or vv.) It is also quite common to have an emergency escape from the Bow Thruster compartment to the mess room above, with the hatch permanently open.
The fire doors from there to the LQ and in the stairwell are also frequently lashed/blocked open.

Having welding cables and hoses etc. running through such doors is not uncommon while at shipyards.
I have even found some that was semi.permanent on older and less well managed boats and rigs.

PS> Shipyards usually have fire / security guards making rounds while under yard management. (Maybe not applicable to naval ships/yards??)

I’ve never seen statistical evidence to support this but I agree with your assessment. The Navy needs to address the issue as well as the commercial side. Who do you expect could take the lead and draw up guidelines as well as insuring they are enforced? On the civilian side in the US, the CG is already overburdened.

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The US Navy has billions of dollars in their budget, surely they could make sure safety regulations were enforced to prevent fires one would think. But, if it doesn’t go down range it doesn’t support a contractor so it may not be in a budget. It would be fairly easy to get a copy of the contract for the yard work on the Richard and see who is responsible for fire in the yard. The Navy signed it so an intrepid reporter should be able to get it under the FOIA.
On the commercial side there is little governmental regulation in the yard for the ship, however they are covered by insurance. But the Navy is covered by the taxpayers.

There always seems to be money available for salvage, environmental cleanup, lawsuits, repairs and replacements though.

Considering the ship was near the end of a quarter billion dollar yard period and replacement cost has been estimated at up to $4 billion, one might argue that the costs to train and install a few qualified fire protection folks on each vessel in the yard and give them unquestioned stop work authority is one Hell of a bargain.

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Maybe CNO is reading the forum and not thinking about rebuilding.:sleepy:

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With the Bonhomme Richard being a dated class design and a steam plant to boot I would expect them to retire the ship. The newer America Class LHA’s are already being built.

Isn’t this already the role of Marine chemist? Doesn’t the navy as well as shipyards, vessel owners, and vendors have to follow the CFR as well as NFPA306 & OSHA requirements? Where a chemist will come in and certify the space is cleaned and ready for hot work?

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