Norfolk has no fire boats either. The 6 Moran contract tugs that are assigned to the base all have fire monitors and Moran and McAllister have FiFi rated boats in the harbor as well. The local FDs all have small craft fire boats.
I’m not sure it’s practical for the navy to have dedicated fire boats when the local navy contracted and commercial tugs have the capabilities.
The water capacity and reach - see the above photo copied from gCaptain where the water jets look rather feeble - of the San Diego harbour tugs are no match for a purposely built fire fighting boat like the RPA 12, one out of seven, operating in the Rotterdam area. A big difference is the telescoping arm which increases the reach dramatically. With a large ship, like in this case, this is a big advantage.
The patrol boats are well equipped. Two medium-sized fire monitors on the port and starboard side in front of the bridge, the same monitor on a telescopic arm behind the bridge and a large monitor in the middle behind the bridge. These can be fed with water, but also with foam. In a powerful jet, but also atomizing the water. For self-protection, the ship can wrap itself in a curtain of water to prevent contamination from chemicals or overheating from fire. Furthermore, the ships have equipment for the crew on board, such as air masks and protective clothing. They can transfer water to two fire trucks and perform many other tasks.
Almost all equipment can be operated from the bridge. All information is visible on large LCD screens. A modest joystick operates the rudders, and two small engine room telegraphs control both the engine speed and the pitch of the propellers. The RPA 12 can produce an immense water jet, 30.000 liters per minute, from the telescoping arm which is 16 meters above the water level, about 150 meters far. All this can be controlled using a joystick and the dynamic positioning system.
I agree with this. For the Navy to have dedicated fire boats each boat would cost 10 times more than a commercial vessel to build & each one would have 50 crewmembers on board. They would train everyday for years & once every two decades when a fire did occur the boats wouldn’t be properly manned or have mechanical problems that would prevent them from fighting the fire anyways. Might as well let commercial mariners & private companies handle it IMO.
The Rotterdam area is far larger than is the port of San Diego.
I know, in San Diego you do not need seven fire boats. Not having one of those is the other end and a bit strange especially considering the cost and importance of a number of the war ships there. I read that a replacement would cost 4 billion dollars…
San Francisco has three fire boats manned by the SF fire department. I don’t believe there’s enough manpower qualified and on the payroll to run all three simultaneously.
The newest (St Francis) is 5 years old and is rated to pump 18,000gpm (about 75,000 lpm). It was used most recently a few weeks ago against a warehouse fire.
The other two are the Phoenix built in 1955 and the Guardian built in 1951. The Phoenix was supposed to be retired but was retained after it crucially supported fighting the fires in the Marina District during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake response. The Guardian was purchased with private funds from Vancouver, BC, by residents in 1990 after the quake.
San Francisco (the city) doesn’t have a very active commercial port - container traffic is mostly in Oakland, auto import/export in Richmond and Benicia, and oil in Richmond and other cities in the North Bay and towards Sacramento. AFAIK none of those areas have dedicated fire boats.
If all seven of Rotterdam’s fire boats had been in San Diego the Bonhomme Richard would have still been gutted by this fire. Too deep seated for fire boats to fight. Good for topside boundary cooling only which was in this case supplied by helos.
Going back to my op. The primary purpose of a fireboat is not fighting ship fires, it’s as a mobile pump with an unlimited supply of water.
From the wiki page of my favorite boat, FDNY’s Fire Fighter (built by, naval architect William Francis Gibbs, the same man who built the United States):
“ Following the collapse of both buildings and resultant failure of the majority of the water mains serving lower Manhattan, Fire Fighter and the rest of the FDNY Marine Units became the sole source of water for firefighting efforts at Ground Zero, a duty which Fire Fighter maintained for a period of three weeks until sufficient repairs were completed on landside water mains to permit her release.”
1906 Earthquake:
The fire department responded, but soon discovered their biggest problem: The earthquake hadn’t just broken gas lines. It had also broken the water pipes feeding the neighborhood’s fire hydrants. As fire engines ferried in water from blocks away, and volunteers scooped up what water they could carry in paint buckets to throw on the fire, dispatchers summoned up a rarely-used resource
United States Navy fireboats USS Leslie, USS Fortune and USS Active were employed to provide the water to extinguish the fires triggered in the aftermath of the disastrous 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
That day changed the course of history for the San Francisco Fire Department. Despite having two completely separate water systems, each with its own reservoirs and fire hydrants, the department learned that metal pipes are no match for the force of a major earthquake — especially in the many parts of the city’s waterfront that are built on soft landfill and prone to liquefaction.
“In 1987, they were wondering why we still had fireboats, so they talked about decommissioning them at the time,” Amdahl said. But after 1989, “Everybody realized, yes, we do need fireboats, and we need more than just one.”
———
I don’t have the reference in front of me but basically the majority of residents evacuated San Francisco via the docks but that was only possible because the fireboats came and extinguished the pier fires.
———
Also of note in the head of the NRC’s Fukushima response team’s after action report Chuck Castro says the only viable solution to providing cooling water to reactors after earthquakes is with fireboats.
And while fireboats aren’t much good at fighting ship fires directly they are still critical.
In the USS BH fire last week the firefighters boarding the vessel did. Ot have enough water pressure and Insufficient pressure can be a deadly problem. Chouest tug was pulled from cooling to provide water directly to the engines.
Tampa does not have a designated fireboat either. In 1993, a horrible collision involving 3 vessels occurred just west of Skyway Bridge… A 250k clean oil barge caught fire, a black oil barge was holed, the outbound small bulker damaged and taking on water. Tampa fire department within a few hours hired a large Gulf Coast transit tug and mounted upgraded fire monitors on it that contributed quite a bit to containing and extinguishing the fire.
I’m not ignoring it and it doesn’t contradict my OP.
These are amazing boats and I have nothing bad to say about them. I have worked with them directly in the past and I’m very glad we have them in port.
That said they are excellent (and much needed!) backup units but they are not the same as having a dedicated fireboat.
“Local harbor tugs” are working ships and they are very busy. There are two big problems (and lots of smaller ones) in using working ships for emergency.
They can’t drop everything and immediately respond. If they are working a ship when a fire breaks out they need to stay with that ship until she is safely docked or anchored.
They do not have the time to train at the level of fireman, attend emergency planning groups, help develop contingency plans, etc.
This works both ways. On one hand the crew doesn’t have the training to jump right into every possible scenario. That’s a problem but one a crew can work through. The bigger problem is - without training with local emergency responders- the fire chiefs don’t learn about their capabilities and therefore don’t know how to use them probably.
This is exactly what happened here. The chiefs decided to use a known entity (those tiny police boats) over a much more capable solution (the chouest boats) because they didn’t really understand the capability of these boats.
So, yes, we need dedicated fireboats.
I’d be happy to see chouest get the contract and the best solution might be to rotate the existing harbor tug crews aboard her so the sailors working aboard the “ tractor-like tugs working for the Navy base providing towing and emergency and firefighting services” get experience working directly with emergency services.
And here’s the REAL problem.
Yes. American merchant mariners are extraordinarily resourceful and highly capable of getting up to speed fast and providing real solutions during times of crisis.
But we need to STOP marketing this. Everytime we jump in and tell some crazy story about saving the day in a crisis (and there are a LOT of those stories) the bean counters use that as justification to screw us out of the jobs, equipment and training we need.
Yes I’m sure the local harbor tugs and other sailors in San Diego would do an admirable job in any future emergency. But they just aren’t going to do the job as fast or as well as they would be able to if we had access to the amount of equipment and training that a port like a Rotterdam has.
When a fire or police department lobbies for a new truck they don’t say “we are awesome, look what we have done when we have had to make do.” No, they instead point to failures and make it clear that if they are forced to make due without the proper equipment that people will die.
I didn’t say you did ignore it, quite the opposite. But yeah it does contradict your OP. Primary purpose is a distinction without a difference. Purpose is intent behind who provided an asset, mindful of broad utilities in multiple scenarios. What purpose would a dedicated Navy Fire boat serve that a multi mission platform contracted as these Chouest tugs can’t provide more effectively and efficiently across multiple services? Better value to have a towing boat with fire fighting than firefighting without towing.
That’s like saying you can cancel weekly firedrills aboard ship because your company purchased way more firefighting gear than the regulatory minimums.
Equipment is nothing without people. People are nothing without training and experience.
What amount of training WITH federal, state and local firefighters do the ECO crews conduct on a regular basis. More importantly, how well are local firefighters trained in working with commercial harbor tugs?
No it isn’t. Those fire parties are helmsmen, enginemen, and fulfill primary occupations, while training for extraordinary ones and to serve satisfactorily, train and drill for both. I won’t comment on how well Navy does that with these contracted assets. Your original post questions why no such asset existed, such assets did. If it does not conform to a particular vision of how you would provide the service, that is your opinion.
Wasn’t a crazy story John. Crazy part was after the fire was out I arrived from the Carribbean to be vetted to take what cargo was left back to be re-refined. The NTSB and USCG taking flash pictures on a non gas free vessel was crazy. I did not make friends that day/evening.
It looks like a minor detail but with the DP system engaged the captain can fully concentrate on the extinguishing of the fire. With a large fire probably three, four or five of these boats are working in close proximity of each other but the DP will keep them apart.
The Tampa fire was eventually put out with the help of quite a few agencies. The foam crew arrived on army LCM’s. A video provided by Tampa FD, is on you tube regarding the cooperation of all involved.
I’ll second that! After years of sailing on ships that should have gone to the breakers long ago and like all the other engineers before me, taking great pride in fixing, making, and repairing, it finally sunk in that I was part of the problem, not the solution.
We kept junk running, we facilitated greedy management. We were like the family of a drunk, we kept buying booze for the alcoholic while thinking we were saving them from pain and expense. We used to have a saying about the results of our work, “the ship goes out, the ship comes back” and as long as it does the office is happy and nothing changes. We were too proud of our skills and too conscientious of our duty to just say it’s broke and we can’t fix it this time.
Sometimes the American marine engineer is his own worst enemy. Breaking out ships for first Gulf War was a matter of enormous pride for the American mariner, it should have been a source of great shame for ship managers and politicians.
I endorse everything you say. I have been amazed at the age of some of the tonnage I have seen still in service under the US flag.
