I don’t deal with naval vessels, so I can’t say what the practice is there. In our commercial operations the marine chemist checks tanks to see if they’re gas free for hot work/human entry and, nothing else. Could be different for the Navy.
The danger from our shipyard operation is not so much gas, or liquid fuel, but class A-material. It will be interesting to see what fueled the fire on the Bonhomme Richard. Fires involving liquid fuel on a non-operational vessel don’t happen a lot. When they do, it’s no fuel in the tanks that are the problem, but the incidental fuel (rags, filters). And on commercial vessels in shipyard they can be the source of the fire, the ignition fuel, but the main fuel load itself is usually something else.
In shipyards, inspected vessels are hard to burn because there is so little Class-A in the vessel. On uninspected vessels, like the Alaskan fishery vessels I work on, there can be a lot of Class-A. Back in the 1990s old C1-class “Knot” ships used to go up like roman candles on the Lake Washington Ship Canal pretty often. Welding during shipyard was always the culprit, and the fuel load was mostly foam insulation, a staple of Alaskan fishery boat construction.
When I saw the photos of the BR interior damage, it looked exactly the same as the damage I’ve seen over the years. But I guess all burnt boats look the same. Which led me to wonder, what was the fuel load? I presumed that outside of liquid fuel and munitions, there wouldn’t be much to burn on a war ship. Guess I was wrong.
Looking at CFR CFR 46
It does say marine chemist are required for hot work on specific areas of the ship, particularly when they are in port. Sailing as an engineer on deep sea vessels, every company I have worked for wouldn’t let us preform any welding anywhere once inside the sea buoy without a marine chemist cert. It was previously mentioned or asked who could take up the lead to draw up guidelines and enforcing them. Why not use marine chemist as they already provide this service when fuel tanks or systems are involved and just expand the areas that they oversee?
Some of the photos show lube oil barrels. Probably lots of wooden pallets and cardboard as well, pretty much an Aleutian freighter load northbound.
The fact that it burned from stem to stern must indicate the “warehouse” was packed with Class A and probably a load of lube and hydraulic oil drums. To me that smacks of really sloppy housekeeping.
Maybe because there is a difference in focus for a marine chemist and a shipyard qualified person with responsibility for managing hazards other than toxic or flammable gases in enclosed spaces.
The cost of nuclear weapons isn’t included in the defense budget as that is Dept. of Energy, much to the surprise of former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, so add that in to the military industrial complex boondoggle.
