Posted on 07/13/2020 2:26:03 PM PDT by NRx
More than 400 sailors are working to put out the massive fire that continues to rage aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego and Navy officials are unclear how long the blaze might continue to burn.
The fire has brought down the amphibious assault ship's forward mast and caused other damage to the ship's superstructure that rises above its flight deck.
"There is a tremendous amount of heat underneath and that's where it's -- it's flashing up -- also forward, closer to the bow again there's a heat source and we're trying to get to that as well," Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck, the commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 3 said at a news conference Monday in San Diego.
More than 400 sailors are working to put out the massive fire that continues to rage aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego and Navy officials are unclear how long the blaze might continue to burn.
The fire has brought down the amphibious assault ship's forward mast and caused other damage to the ship's superstructure that rises above its flight deck.
"There is a tremendous amount of heat underneath and that's where it's -- it's flashing up -- also forward, closer to the bow again there's a heat source and we're trying to get to that as well," Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck, the commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 3 said at a news conference Monday in San Diego.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
It’s in port, not enough water beneath the keel to sink completely. It may very likely be salvageable. Massive damage and fires on WWII ships were brought into dry docks, repaired and went back out to sea. The USS South Dakota is one example.
Lousy DC team
I would guess a lot of us on FR have fought shipboard fires. I have - fun in training, indescribably miserable in real life. Once a fire has been burning for a full day, I cannot imagine getting it under control and repairing the ship. We need this ship, but I’m not sure that need matters at this point.
Thanks for the info
I would think not. The structural damage due to heat treating the hull for that long? This will be berry berry expensive.
They should tow it out to shallow waters and scuttle it and that will put the fires out. Then they can refloat it later.
Fire That Scorched Russian Carrier (Admiral Kuznetsov) Could Happen At U.S. Navy Shipyards, Too"
I have been on lots of burning flooding boats.
It never lasted a week in port.
All the electronics are probably cooked at this point.
The sub incident wasn’t that lobg ago, either.
An assault ship, a sub, a minesweeper, and a couple of mangled destroyers in recent memory. Oof-dah.
I think the last one was the Los Angeles-class attack sub USS Miami. That one also happened in a shipyard, a shipyard worker intentionally set a fire that wound up causing so much damage that the Navy decided to decommission the sub instead of repairing it, since it was in for a major overhaul and nuclear refueling anyway. The USS San Francisco (another Los Angeles-class sub) was almost scrapped after colliding with a seamount, but they replaced the entire forward section with the one from the USS Honolulu, and scrapped the Honolulu instead. (San Francisco had just been overhauled and refueled so it had many years left, Honolulu was due in for its refuel soon.)
}:-)4
USS guitarro sank at the pier in mare island but they resurrected it.
Why do you accuse innocent birds?
You would hope! That's 1.5 billion dollars in 1990's money, not including embarked aircraft.
Just damn.
USS Thresher, USS Scorpion
From the Wikipedia article on USS Miami (SSN-755):
At 5:41 p.m. EDT on 23 May 2012, fire crews were called with a report of a fire on Miami while being overhauled at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. At the time the submarine was on a scheduled 20-month maintenance cycle,[4][5] indicating the submarine was undergoing an extensive overhaul called an “Engineering Overhaul”.[6] Injuries to seven firefighters had been reported by national media.[7] One crewmember suffered broken ribs when he fell through a hole left by removed deck plates during the fire.[8] It took firefighters 12 hours to extinguish the fire.[9]
Originally the U.S. Navy reported that the fire started when an industrial vacuum cleaner, used “to clean worksites on the sub after shipyard workers’ shifts,” sucked up a heat source that ignited debris inside the vacuum. On 23 July 2012 Casey J. Fury, a civilian painter and sandblaster working on the sub, was indicted on two counts of arson after confessing to starting the fire. Fury admitted to setting the 23 May fire by igniting some rags on the top bunk of a bunk room. He claimed to have started the fire to get out of work early.[10][11][12][13] On 15 March 2013 Fury was sentenced to over 17 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $400 million in restitution.[14]
The final repair bill was going to be between $450 million and $700 million so the Navy just scrapped it.
}:-)4
She's dead, Jim.
It’ll hurt the Captain and some other officers. Maybe the watch crew at the time of the fire. The rest of the crew will be fine. The Brass will want to keep it as low key as possible to avoid fingers being pointed at themselves. “Who appointed that incompetent Captain?” Etc etc.
Not a good omen for surviving in a shooting war and taking hits.
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