Posted on 05/23/2012 5:32:52 PM PDT by moonshot925
KITTERY, Maine — Multiple firefighters were reportedly injured while battling a fire aboard the USS Miami nuclear-powered attack submarine tonight at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, according to a shipyard official and emergency radio communications.
Firefighters were initially called to the Shipyard just before 6 p.m. for a report of a fire on a ship in dry dock. According to emergency scanner traffic, fire crews encountered heavy smoke and fire and two firefighters were taken from the scene with injuries. Two additional firefighters were later reported as requiring transport from the scene.
Shipyard public affairs specialist Gary Hildreth said the fire is located in the forward compartment of the ship and all nonessential personnel were ordered to evacuate.
As of 7:30 p.m., black smoke visible from Prescott Park in Portsmouth, N.H., continued to billow from the dry dock. A Portsmouth fire truck was on standby at Peirce Island.
should be in “breaking” rather than general/chat. Hope everyone is ok.
I have a New Hamshite station on my cable system...I’ll have to tune into their 11PM News for coverage.
In dry dock it’s not surprising. A lot of debris, cardboard and other trash builds up during overhaul. Usually, however, there should have been a fire watch from the crew watching if there was any welding, etc going on.
And if no fire watch then the below decks watch should have caught it.
Loose Lips Sink Ships!
I’ll guarantee there was a fire watch stationed if any hot work was going on. In addition, there would have been crew briefings about the work, and regular MC announcements throughout the ship while the work was in process.
Too early to tell what has caused the fire.
I bet it’s a conspiracy to get to decommission nuke subs.
Interesting that this season final shows of NCIS was about fires on US Navy vessels....
Art imitating life or Something like that....
Of course it was a evil middle aged white guy who is the mastermind....
I would imagine fighting a fire in that sealed ship would be tough as there is little way to ventilate heat and smoke to the outside.
As the fire is pushed back smoke and heat ,along with steam from the hose line,hits the back wall and comes right back at you.Ventilation is a necessary part of firefighting, without it the job is tough. I don’t know anything about firefighting in a submarine, but I would imagine the close quarters means only the one lineman and his officer can attack it at one time and others have to wait behind until their bottles are used up, and they can get to the entranceway to the fire.
Too early to tell what has caused the fire.
sorry. dyslexia glasses backwards again..
Ivan must have a lot of loose lips.
Well rottndog,
You’re the pro from Dover when it comes to subs.
Ever get nervous being Waaay down deep?
Scuba Diver here, been down a whole 150 feet, big whoop.
A fire on a boat is one of the worst casualties...the first thing to happen is ventilation is secured—you don’t want to be pumping smoke to other parts of the boat. In port, you can ventilate the ship, but only after the unaffected compartments are protected from the smoke. The worst case scenario is if the interior hull insulation catches fire—very toxic smoke, and difficult to extinguish.
When a fire is called, the offgoing watch (casualty assistance team) meets up where directed (usually the crew’s mess), puts on firefighting gear, and proceeds to the fire. They will use a charged seawater hose, and will consist of at least 2 hose handlers and another man with a hand held thermal imager. The thermal imger allows the handler to direct where the hose nozzelman points the water—can’t actually see the fire in a darkened compartment or if it’s in an area obscured by equipment.
It’s all very tightly controlled....and we did numerous fire drills and simulations while underway.
No, never got nervous on the boat. Deep, shallow, didn’t matter. Always too busy doing my job to think about it...and after enough sleep deprivation, didn’t care.
Heard you sub boys were always “nearly the best” there was???
I wouldn’t know I worked, “military intelligence”. Bunch of slackers and dumb asses.
I was an electronics technician aboard USS Francis Scott Key (SSBN-657) from 1984 to 1989.
Our boat carried 16 Trident C4 SLBMs. Each SLBM carried 8 W76 100 kiloton warheads. 5 times the power of Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima.
Boomers are and always were the most important part of our strategic nuclear deterrent.
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