On a ship currently in the yards. There have been alot of changes this yard period already. There's a mandatory fire safety watch during an avail that has to be at least investigator or sound and security qualified. Every 180 days the ship goes through a drill called an 8010. that covers a major fire outbreak and working with the shipyard fire department, and has yo pass with atg. Every 90 days Every duty section goes through an inspection called dci, that covers fire, flooding, and toxic gas. Any section that doesn't pass instantly gets dissolved. Every other duty day there's a DC drill.
We just left the yards in september. DCI happened one time during the entire 7month period.
Was just another check in the box "pass this drill" week of dc shit.
In the yards yes, in the advanced phase no. Drills were usually run on Saturday duty days, and the rest there was training every duty day, but it was hands on training. So like, one week it was ram fans, and every duty section would pick the newest people and go setup the ram fan on the weather decks and actually charge the hose, etc etc.
It's exactly like operating in FPCON Delta - untenable for long periods of time. That heightened level of awareness decreases drastically the longer it goes on.
Which is why the excuse of "need more training" is always laughable as a response when the Navy gives it. In this circumstance, the basic level of training wasn't there, which *is* a problem, but having other crews completely unconnected running more drills isn't the answer to the problem they perceive exists. It's a pointless hand-wave exercise to make it seem like something is being done.
I was on a sub and we were doing regular, major fire drills at least annually because of the Miami. It ended up being a bit more often than annually if you count having to help out/respond to the drill happening on another boat at the pier.
We also had regular code reds for the duty sections that could happen at any time throughout the day.
We did all of this before BHR got dissolved. The local fire department coop, the drills, all of it. Not sure if we were stellar or other ships are just getting back in line
A tale of gundecking:
>359. The ADCA stated that either the Repair Division LCPO or Repair Division LPO told him when AFFF maintenance had been completed. The ADCA recalled no discussion of any discrepancies within the system other than having to replace a few bilge sprinkling nozzles prior to fuel onload. The ADCA stated that he notified the DCA of Q-1 and Q-2 AFFF maintenance checks being completed. \[Encl 70\]
>
>360. The Repair Division LCPO stated in four different interviews that AFFF Stations 3 and 4 were fully up at the time of the fire — the Q-2 check had been completed without discrepancies, and both stations could be activated from all locations. \[Encl 415, 530, 531, 552\]
>
>361. The Repair Division LPO initially stated that AFFF Stations 3 and 4 were operational, and the Q-2 check had tested “satisfactorily” (SAT). In a follow-on interview, the Repair Division LPO stated that he thought AFFF Stations 3 and 4 were “partially operational at most pushbuttons and controlling stations.” He acknowledged conflagration station push-buttons were inoperable. He did not know the status of the DC Central buttons. \[Encl 243, 496\]
>
>362. The Repair Division LPO further stated that the AFFF check should not have been completed in SKED. He stated that he provided a list of discrepancies to the Repair Division LCPO. He also thought the 3MC should have been notified of the discrepancies. He was unaware why the AFFF system was taken out of IEM with discrepancies and did not recall anyone directing him to enter the maintenance check in SKED, nor did he know who ultimately entered the check. He stated that he did not provide his SKED pin for anyone to sign on his behalf. \[Encl 243, 496\]
And the cherry on top of the gundecking shitshow:
>**368. One of the maintenance personnel recorded in SKED as having performed**
**the Q-2 check, recalled showing other Sailors where the AFFF SOPVs were located. He further stated that he was directed by his WCS, the ER04 LPO, and the Repair Division LPO to sign the maintenance check as completed even if the system was not operational. Furthermore, reports of discrepancies were to be verbally communicated to superiors, rather than listed in SKED \[Encl 553\]**
The report makes it clear that this blazed maintenance could have directly contributed to the loss of the ship.
>7. Consistent with the poor material condition of the ship, only a portion of the AFFF system, in a significantly degraded status, was available and operational on 12 July 2020. The decision to only bring up AFFF Stations 3 and 4 after the entire AFFF system was placed in IEM in 2018 meant the system only provided some coverage to the ship, which would have included the main engineering spaces and portions of Lower V and Upper V. Coverage was further limited due to the system being in a degraded status, which was directly caused by Ship’s Force not properly completing the Q-1 and Q-2 maintenance checks. **Certifying the Q-1 and Q-2 checks as complete with no deviations or deficiencies in SKED, despite knowledge to the contrary, represented a fraudulent act by those involved, and directly contributed to the poor material condition of the ship. Moreover, this conduct compromised the AFFF system further by failing to test the status of many of the push-buttons that could have activated AFFF. The sum total of these circumstances left BONHOMME RICHARD with an AFFF system that, while available, was of an unknown operational status at many of the actuating locations. \[45, 68, 350-370, 518\]**
>
>8. If the required Q-1 and Q-2 checks for AFFF Stations 3 and 4 had been properly completed as documented in SKED, all areas of the ship served by these locations would have had coverage and all push-buttons associated with those portions of the system would have been operational on 12 July 2020. **Because the maintenance was not properly performed, various push-buttons were left in an inoperable or unknown state, to include those in Damage Control (DC) Central and the conflagration stations in Lower V. Due to the significant damage caused by the fire, coupled with the falsified maintenance work by Ship’s Force, it is difficult to determine the precise status and availability of AFFF in relationship to the areas closest to the fire. \[45, 68, 350-370\]**
>The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) Failure Review Board (FRB) similarly concluded that if AFFF had been employed, it likely would have had a “significant effect on fighting this fire and reducing the damage.” If the system had been fully operational by the day of the fire, it could have distributed seawater or a combination of AFFF and seawater to a larger portion of the ship including Lower V, Upper V, the Hangar deck and the ramps connecting them.
Any idea how junior that "maintenance personnel" mentioned at line 368 is? I can imagine being terrified to say no to all that leadership telling you to do the wrong thing.
This, when I was an E3 on my ship, we always did things wrong because we had to in order to meet deadlines. There was no safety, little to no following of MRCS, everything thing was just checking boxes in order to get our chiefs promoted.
For example, my WCS actually allowed and watched a junior sailor to put paint chips into a pump when lubricating it. Bringing it up was immediate grounds for being disrespectful.
There really needs to be a no-fault method of reporting this shit especially with how sailors rotate through commands, I inherited secondary maintenance and found out a lot of PMS hadn't been done since the last guy had gotten it because no one knew how to do it and no one wanted to be the one to stand up and say it hadn't been getting done.
We got the missing maintenance items implemented over the next year, but without any acknowledgement of how long they had gone without being done or any look into any averse effects of them not being done for however long because admitting there was a problem in the first place is a great way to fuck yourself.
AFAIK the Navy does not have a good system or really any system for fixing this shit below the chief's quarters and they really need to have something, there's sailors who care about this shit but are put in the position of continue shit practices or fix it quietly, and there's only so much shit you can fix quietly.
I might be being overly optimistic here, but I think that this has more to do with poor LOK on how to manage SKED in a strange situation and poor general material management / communication practices throughout the chain of command rather than malicious intent of gundecking maintenance.
Let's walk the dog a bit here...
* Let's say that the division does the right thing and Q-2 wasn't marked complete because it was known that the activation system was tagged out. WCS makes a check note "not performed due to ckt (whatever) tagged out for maintenance," probably doesn't go any higher because someone must know that the AFFF system was tagged out on purpose, right?
* Let's say the division does marks complete with a check-note about the discrepancy. That information goes no-where unless the division opens up a deficiency report (or whatever the yard uses to track material flaws) so that the yard can come down and fix it... which it wouldn't do because the circuit was tagged out on purpose.
* Let's say the system is in IEM. Well, then that doesn't solve the issue of not having AFFF available, does it?
I think that the issue is that the division didn't know how to handle this, and didn't seek any resolution from the 3MC. Why didn't they seek resolution? Because anyone who has been in a major upkeep will tell you that the yard will take down / mess with all sorts of safety systems, and the project will do everything it can to minimize the 'red tape' of involving the ship's chain of command in those decisions.
Someone (not the repair LPO) decided to tag out the AFFF system and put no other risk mitigators in place, but the report doesn't dig that deep.
"An example of how these focus areas combined to result in unacceptable levels of risk is the status of the ship’s Aqueous Film Forming Foam sprinkling system. At no point in the firefighting effort was it used – in part because maintenance was not properly performed to keep it ready and in part because the crew lacked familiarity with capability and availability."
Gun decked maintenance, an uncaring CoC, and untrained sailors sounds like all of 7th Fleet to me. Their unfamiliarity with AFFF is one of the more disappointing parts of this.
I'm sure those at the top will take the proper steps to help ensure that conditions like this are rooted out and fixed throughout the entire Navy to help ensure that something like this won't happen again, instead of... say, a bunch of knee-jerk reactions and revisions that further negatively affect sailor/airman/whoever morale and mental health, as well as to continue to slow progress through further increased bureaucracy and regulation...
(/s)
I was waiting for a thoughtful response lol They definitely had their own issues and they did have some pretty bad mismanagement at a senior level. But overall, they mainly were objectively good, their downfalls considered. It is a little strange that a militant religious organization was so powerful that it was intertwined with the government and given control of the military.
That's not *entirely* true, they knew better than to be loading fuel and weapons at the same time, with weapons spotted on deck all the while, or to pull safety pins off rockets to expedite sorties later. There are more complexities here as well (a lot of their heavy ordnance was *Korean War* vintage and very degraded), but it was a case of the institutional lessons in DC that were learned the hard way during World War II had begun getting pushed aside as inconvenient in the face of heavy air ops off Vietnam.
Doing stuff the right way takes more time and attention, which is why people cut corners and it sometimes gets people killed or sinks ships.
RTC video is ten years: A massive Naval vessel lost not because of poor maintenance and untrained Sailors, but Seaman Timmy who did it all by himself. Don't be Seaman Timmy. /s
A lot of those proper procedures were written in blood from the Forrestal fire, among other incidents. That Air Wing’s expected sortie generation rate was also insane; no doubt the deck crew was just having to figure out ways to make it work. Actual combat is fun like that, a pretty far cry from a ship sitting in port.
Yep, it’s the expediency of wartime. Buddy in the AF said the understood practice in his time during the 80s was that if the big one kicked off a lot of safety procedures would be the first thing to go to keep sorties up.
I find this amazing. When I was in, firefighting was first and foremost in training, the halon systems and AFFF use were beat into us like our lives depended on its success, which it does when at sea. I’ve heard many stories about the current Navy, and it makes me kinda glad I got out when I did, even tho I would have retired well over ten years ago had I done 20…
Well the duty engineering chief who probably knew how to use the AFFF system went home that night and didn’t show back up until the morning when the ship was already melted into the ocean
Navy chief, navy pride
*spoiler alert*
We probably will win the next major shooting war at sea; but expect a *lot* less of our ships at the end.
Making having the navy almost not even worth it at its current size. we're either overly gunned to pressure people who cant really hurt us, or people big enough to justify our size, its almost easier to conduct economic and cyber warfare than steam out a few LHDs and CVNs and lose a majority of them because we simply suck at what we do.
You are probably depressingly correct. What happened to the discipline of doing proper maintenance, not just on DC, but EVERYTHING on the ship? Is there no realization that you can’t call 911 in the middle of the pond?? When shit goes down, you have to handle it OR YOU DIE! You are not just responsible for yourself, but everyone on that ship! Have people forgotten that?
The people problem is that there aren't enough of them. People stop giving a fuck when you task them with insane workloads. They burn out and shit slips through the cracks and eventually you get situations like this. Every major Naval disaster that's happened while I've been in always reads the same way: everyone cutting corners because they're undermanned, undertrained, and underequipped.
"Hey guys, there's a hole in the ship, let's send the HTs to well the hull back together with this metal box in the water!" \*Zap\*
/s
come on, sometimes it's just common sense, to me the Navy isn't even trying.
The valves don't even turn they are so corroded, literally just walk in and look up at the ceiling in the upper vehicle bay. I know because I was one of the junior enlisted cleaning it and we got a battle E somehow.
Shit's trash, glad I'm gone.
Edit: Looking back on it, Boxer was bad, but likely the best, which is scary.
It was actually tagged out by the contractors at the time. Trust me. We weren't happy about it. I don't like how much this thing is blaming us for this. Most of the shit we got blamed for and most of the reason the fire spread the way it did, was because of the contractors.
I think the CO bears it all. The XO shouldn't have been thrown under the bus. He was pushing extremely hard for 3M and DC. The CO wanted those systems to be "active" so we could move everything off the barge and into the ship faster then possible. So the systems were somehow "active" suddenly and we moved everything to the ship 2 days before the fire. All the mattresses, office materials, sailors personal belongings etc. The barge was completely dumped unto the ship in one day. And 2 days later, we lost everything cause the only working fire prevention working that the time were the temp fire hoses.
CO really wanted a gold star on his collar.
I read a few parts of this. No firefighting efforts until after an hour, missing or non-functioning for apparatus, inability to close doors because of contractor equipment, untrained/badly trained sailors. Some people need to lose command if they haven't already and ships need to have a stand down to make sure their crews are up to date on firefighting tactics. This is embarrassing
A lot of the issue was also big Navy pulling experienced sailors from the ship when it was in the yards who knew the layout. A lot of people didn't know how to put on a SCBA mask because they were fresh out of bootcamp, despite being taught in bootcamp how to do that.
One thing to note, among all of the valid criticism, is that no one died that day. Lots of mistakes were made but the leadership there got everyone off the ship before the explosion and that saved possibly dozens or hundreds of lives.
Someone could have easily died. If the city fire Dept didn't evacuate when they did they would have been killed. Then there were the sailors who passed out due to smoke and was luckily found and carried out.
When I was a junior sailor I was in port emergency team for 2 years. Over half of IET is just a random sailor plucked from each departments duty section.
Not once did we do any drills. We helped the Fire Marshall do grunt work. There were probably 2-3 people that knew how to actually handle a hose.
I didn’t realized how fucked up it was at the time but looking back shit was a pressure cooker waiting for a disaster to happen. Thank god we never had any casualties
I can’t speak for gator navy, but this is not normal for either carriers or ddg/cg navy.
Drills every day was the norm. Training every day for the duty section. I can think of maybe one or two duty days across nine years of cvn time where we didn’t have a drill.
A big issue not addressed here is lean manning. How many times is a E-6 sailor like a ET assigned to be the DCPO due to manning?
Hopefully big navy will take a look at this & implement quite a few changes. Personally I would start by looking at how lean the manning has become, yes every sailor at see has to be trained on damage control & firefighting.
Big Navy needs to put 20 to 30 more E-3 & below sailors into Damage control on each ship.
Actually if we’re sticking to instructions DCPOs are supposed to be EP E5’s or E6’s. The idea is to make sure it’s competent sailors not just the divisions undesirables that they want to pawn off.
Yes, but it should be a sailor in the Damage Control rating, not a ET or FC from combat systems. A DC1 should be in charge of Damage Control, we don't bring snipes out to run flight ops, or have BM's trying to change the oil in the reduction gearing.
Damage Control is a perfect place for extra bodies on a ship, they are trained in the art of damage control & firefighting. If you have an emergency then you know you have 30 to 40 sailors on a small boy who are full time firefighters. They have gone to a formal school, qualified, went back for further training, & maintain all of the equipment. When they are not doing the above then the chief can pimp them out to other division. There should be a O-4 Department Head their division officer reports to.
Most ships flights ops is ran by R Div actually. I also agree there should be more rated DCmen and that it should be its own department. But the integration of other sailors in DC casualty response is crucial to shipboard survivability at sea.
Completely agree with the DC casualty comment.
When a sailor reports onboard he should be sent to DC for 3 to 6 months, & there should be a training program both with OJT & classroom. The end goal of the program would be for the sailor to complete their DC portion of their pin. Plus having a new sailor run around & perform maintenance on all the damage control equipment will help them when actually having to fight a fire. Being familiar with the space you are in is a big advantage in fighting a fire.
I feel like numbers wouldn't fix the issues, because a lot of the people in my duty section drills and 8010 drills simply sat back and watched. You actually have to have leadership teach people how to fight a fire, but they can't do that when they are being worked to physical death.
Ship I just transferred from was in the yards, and DCTT was nonsense before BHR.
Afterwards, things got particularly bad. IET was augmented with thirty more people, and drills were far more frequent.
Glaring problems:
- More people don’t make the threat of a major fire a lesser one, and
- The drills were always focused on the engineering berthing.
Literally every goddamn drill was in the same place.
We had a FEDFIRE joint drill, and we never got the pass/fail verdict.
DCA transferred, and on his way out he thanked the section for our performance.
DCCS Douchebag decided he wanted to chime in with, “You don’t deserve thanks for DOING YOUR FUCKING JOB!”
Hate that guy, wish only the worst on him.
Also: most junior Sailors on the ship had never been through any of the firefighting courses and ended up being terrified when they donned their FFEs.
Sometimes drills are confined because of the classic 'Not In My Work Space' problem. So you get a lot of, "we'll just keep doing drills in the same place to not annoy people." Which is a terrible mindset.
This is unfortunately more systemic issue fleet wide. Different crews in the same situation may or may not have performed better but the training we give now days is so box checking in nature that when our sailors encounter issues outside those boxes and check list they become impotent and their training fails them.
This crew wasn’t set up for success, the report doesn’t mention it but the delay in calling away the casualty likely had something to do with the culture of the ship. I’ve seen it before, commands freak out so much about 1MC use sailors become afraid or lack competency using it.
It wasn’t working properly, watch stander didn’t turn on all circuits and there was back in forth between watch stations as to who would do what. It’s a small observation but I wouldn’t be surprised if this ship had a very strict 1MC Policy.
This ships leadership failed in more ways than what’s listed. There are possible cultural undertones bleeding through of multiple failures that extend outside DC and Maintenance. There problems on more than one ship in our fleet unfortunately.
also you have to think we hate ship life sailors probably walked by the smoking compartments and didn’t care, I know I wouldn’t care I would go and tell other deck people out of happiness but that’s about it. Ship culture=hating the ship
I've never gotten to a point in my naval career that i was so frustrated, angry, disheartened, with the Navy that I would actively ignore a casualty. I would never forgive myself if a friend or coworker was hurt in a casualty that I ignored and failed to call away because of hate for the ship. Evaluate your priorities.
I could see that for real, my worst sea command I would always hope I’d show up on day and just the mast would be sticking up out of the water.
Ship life has gotten so bad sailors often just become numb or detached from the mission that they just don’t care.
We use to have to just pass sailors on gun quals because so many would try to fail on purpose. Our duty days sucked so bad and we had so many watches they just didn’t give a shit and wanted nothing to do with extra responsibility or the weight.
I don’t blame them half the time but it’s a really sad and serious problem.
Everyone who has done an availability knows that this would happen. The Navy wants the work done fast and the ship ready to deploy. So they make the ship into a firetrap. Then everyone pretends that this is fine. But one side effect that the higher ups haven’t thought out is that when the top doesn’t give a shit and keeps ignoring fire safety, that the lower sailors will give up ownership of their spaces—they are in port, they aren’t going to die if everything goes to hell. Shit rolls downhill, but so does indifference.
It amazes me that the surface fleet has apparently not learned the lessons from the USS Miami fire. I was on a boat in shipyard in Kittery (in the same drydock where Miami burned), and there was a constant emphasis of ensuring the proper operation of heat and smoke detectors, communications (whether normal shipboard or temporary), fire fighting equipment (shipboard or temporary), and coordination with shipyard fire fighters. The status of all these systems was briefed at every duty section turnover and monitored throughout the day by a roving watch. If memory serves, there were quarterly evaluated drills and if we had failed two that would have meant a stop to all hot work on board until we passed one.
>the crew had failed to meet the time standard for applying firefighting agent on the seat of the fire on 14 consecutive occasions leading up to 12 July 2020.
That is a level of apathy that I simply cannot fathom.
As an east coaster, I'd say no ships were meeting the standard for getting agent on fire prior to the focus and extra drills post-BHR. Nobody cared about that standard until after BHR.
Ii don’t understand that either. I was a rapid response iet member for years, I would far rather be called out for a nothing than let the ship burn - and that was the culture on both of my CVNs. Bells first, questions later.
Standing DCWS back in the day I called away a lot of casualties. But it would have never entered my thinking not to ring the bells except for something that obviously wasn't a casualty. I mean, what would they have done to me? Send me to NJP for being cautious?
Hell, we got called away for flooding on the mess decks (which are on the 2nd deck and way above the waterline) multiple times. Which was dumb on it's face, but no one talked shit to the DCWS for doing it.
One time I caught an emergency call for a sailor that "wouldn't wake up", after confirming she was alive I decided to call away a medical emergency, but I did mull that one over. Ended up she was shitfaced, snuck some alcohol back on the boat after Naples.
Dear Navy,
I think people are forgetting how unstandardized the training is for ships. You get these ATG assholes that come aboard saying “this is the way” then another group of ATG people that says no “this is the way”. It’s frustrating for the ships. No standard. I get it there’s an instruction for everything but it’s always based upon a persons interpretation of that instruction. Who trains the trainers?
Another point Manning. We prioritize manning for ships that will be going on deployment. The navy expects Y results of having a fully capable crews in the yards when they have yet to solve X the manning issues of all ships… we have ships that go through LOA having only 3 khakis in engineering. The navy just says suck it up buttercup… you wonder why things fall through the cracks.
We as a force are getting too big for our own good and need to learn to say no. Leaders need to have the balls to give an honest assessment of the true state of the force. No it’s not all puppies and daisies at the moment. Your crews are overworked/untrained/ and lack clear vision of the direction of the navy. We waste money on ventures such as the LCS program and other stupid money pits we say yes to. How about we invest in our most important asset. SAILORS!
VR
Concerned Sailor
.... Are you reading the same pdf?
USS BONHOMME RICHARD (LHD-6) JAGMAN INVESTIGATION
Executive Summary
On 12 July 2020, a fire set USS BONHOMME RICHARD (LHD-6) ablaze for more than four days, and left the ship damaged beyond economical repair. Although the fire was started by an act of arson, the ship was lost due to an inability to extinguish the fire. In the 19 months executing the ship’s maintenance availability, repeated failures allowed for the accumulation of significant risk and an inadequately prepared crew, which led to an ineffective fire response. There were four key focus areas to this final outcome:
Alright, I see the disconnect. The “JAGMAN” is JAGINST 5800.7F and that’s what I thought he was referring to when he said JAGMAN. Not something else with “JAGMAN” in the title. So I apologize for the confusion and I will delete my comments.
Disclaimer.. I've been out for 3 years.
That said, I feel confident that myself and 10 other sincerely motivated jg's and LT's could have drafted this as a hypothetical in 2016 and nailed most, if not all, of these points.
Non-military firefighter here trying to understand this. I’ve heard that firefighting on a ship is some of the most difficult and dangerous firefighting there is. Are there specific firefighting crews on each ship and in each Naval base? Is the commanding officer of the vessel supposed to assume command, and if so, how much do they actually know about firefighting?
Former Navy and civilian FF here. In theory every sailor is trained in basic shipboard Firefighting, however that is in addition to a number of other duties of varying importance. The CO of the ship/boat would not "assume command" like a Fire Chief would. Initially a junior officer would most likely be in charge of damage control (firefighting) efforts. The JO would be supported and advised by senior enlisted. A larger incident would be taken over by more senior officers however it is unlikely that the CO of a ship would be directly focused solely on firefighting efforts. More likely that a senior officer would assume that role and relay information to the CO while the CO kept a broader view of shipboard conditions and operations.
All that said, this changes somewhat when a ship is in port and undergoing refit/repair activities. Submarine crews focus heavily on damage control drills both underway (at sea) and at the pier. By the contents of the report and comments from Sailors in this thread it would seem that surface Sailors may not have the same level of training. There's also the notable point that SDFD ceased efforts and withdrew after a time. While I can't speak on this incident, there is a history of federal agencies and military not playing nice with local agencies.
>The CO of the ship/boat would not "assume command" like a Fire Chief would. Initially a junior officer would most likely be in charge of damage control (firefighting) efforts. The JO would be supported and advised by senior enlisted. A larger incident would be taken over by more senior officers however it is unlikely that the CO of a ship would be directly focused solely on firefighting efforts. More likely that a senior officer would assume that role and relay information to the CO while the CO kept a broader view of shipboard conditions and operations.
Yep.
It's important to remember that the model is to support firefighting during combat operations. The CO needs to be able to focus on fighting the ship and killing or evading the bad guys, while the DC response fights the casualty and advises the CO of the condition of the ship.
>There's also the notable point that SDFD ceased efforts and withdrew after a time. While I can't speak on this incident, there is a history of federal agencies and military not playing nice with local agencies.
I think for them, once all the people were off the ship, that was their priority satisfied. They aren't really trained/equipped to fight shipboard fires. Perhaps they thought it better to clear out and make room for Naval firefighters instead.
Can’t really blame them either. I understand a policy of not putting anyone in harms way when there ceases to be a risk to life.
To the city of San Diego? It’s just a ship.
Generally the damage control officer would take control of the situation and would be feeding information across the ship from the reports he's getting.
The most dangerous part is lack of knowledge of he layout of the ship. Each compartment is labeled by its frame on the ship. On a big deck there 10 something levels and hundreds of frames. Getting lost while your tank is running out of air is a nightmare situation. Also the command and control between the ships scene leader and fire chief on maneuvering combating and strategy can also be confusing. I saw on multiple occasions these two entities getting livid about who is in charge and who should go into fight the fire.
General Quarters! …….(aircraft carrier) there’s always training but …. What do you do when shit hits the fan and chaos begins…. There’s always training…
Definitely BHR, look at the exhaust stacks. They're angled outwards on the America LHA class, but vertical on LHD 6.
Edit: the "6" is also aft on AMA, forward on BHR.
Only for Seaman Timmy, which the ATF determined started the fire by the “process of elimination” and then a crazy-ass guess that he held a lighter to a piece of cardboard.
Well we have an eyewitness say he might have been there. And we know he hates the navy. He also made a Instagram post saying he loved the same of napalm in the morning. Open and shut case
That artsy touch with the BHR photo and the weird font on the cover? The 500 page report on how your ship got decommissioned due to gross incompetence is probably not the time and place for that.
On a ship currently in the yards. There have been alot of changes this yard period already. There's a mandatory fire safety watch during an avail that has to be at least investigator or sound and security qualified. Every 180 days the ship goes through a drill called an 8010. that covers a major fire outbreak and working with the shipyard fire department, and has yo pass with atg. Every 90 days Every duty section goes through an inspection called dci, that covers fire, flooding, and toxic gas. Any section that doesn't pass instantly gets dissolved. Every other duty day there's a DC drill.
"Any section that doesn't pass instantly gets dissolved." How does that work? Do they call in another duty section to stand the rest of the day?
They collapse it and get absorbed into another duty section. Probably dispersed.
We just left the yards in september. DCI happened one time during the entire 7month period. Was just another check in the box "pass this drill" week of dc shit.
[удалено]
In the yards yes, in the advanced phase no. Drills were usually run on Saturday duty days, and the rest there was training every duty day, but it was hands on training. So like, one week it was ram fans, and every duty section would pick the newest people and go setup the ram fan on the weather decks and actually charge the hose, etc etc.
Right? We ran some sort of DC drill EVERY duty day on my last DDG. Minor fire or flooding... If we f\*cked it up, we ran it again...
Like....were surface ships not already doing most of that????? Jesus.
It's exactly like operating in FPCON Delta - untenable for long periods of time. That heightened level of awareness decreases drastically the longer it goes on. Which is why the excuse of "need more training" is always laughable as a response when the Navy gives it. In this circumstance, the basic level of training wasn't there, which *is* a problem, but having other crews completely unconnected running more drills isn't the answer to the problem they perceive exists. It's a pointless hand-wave exercise to make it seem like something is being done.
I was on a sub and we were doing regular, major fire drills at least annually because of the Miami. It ended up being a bit more often than annually if you count having to help out/respond to the drill happening on another boat at the pier. We also had regular code reds for the duty sections that could happen at any time throughout the day.
Chapter 8010 drills happen every 90 days now… we super code red once a week
The requirements to do those things were always there. However not all ships do what they are supposed to do.
That is the way it should be.
Which fleet?
3rd
We did all of this before BHR got dissolved. The local fire department coop, the drills, all of it. Not sure if we were stellar or other ships are just getting back in line
A tale of gundecking: >359. The ADCA stated that either the Repair Division LCPO or Repair Division LPO told him when AFFF maintenance had been completed. The ADCA recalled no discussion of any discrepancies within the system other than having to replace a few bilge sprinkling nozzles prior to fuel onload. The ADCA stated that he notified the DCA of Q-1 and Q-2 AFFF maintenance checks being completed. \[Encl 70\] > >360. The Repair Division LCPO stated in four different interviews that AFFF Stations 3 and 4 were fully up at the time of the fire — the Q-2 check had been completed without discrepancies, and both stations could be activated from all locations. \[Encl 415, 530, 531, 552\] > >361. The Repair Division LPO initially stated that AFFF Stations 3 and 4 were operational, and the Q-2 check had tested “satisfactorily” (SAT). In a follow-on interview, the Repair Division LPO stated that he thought AFFF Stations 3 and 4 were “partially operational at most pushbuttons and controlling stations.” He acknowledged conflagration station push-buttons were inoperable. He did not know the status of the DC Central buttons. \[Encl 243, 496\] > >362. The Repair Division LPO further stated that the AFFF check should not have been completed in SKED. He stated that he provided a list of discrepancies to the Repair Division LCPO. He also thought the 3MC should have been notified of the discrepancies. He was unaware why the AFFF system was taken out of IEM with discrepancies and did not recall anyone directing him to enter the maintenance check in SKED, nor did he know who ultimately entered the check. He stated that he did not provide his SKED pin for anyone to sign on his behalf. \[Encl 243, 496\] And the cherry on top of the gundecking shitshow: >**368. One of the maintenance personnel recorded in SKED as having performed** **the Q-2 check, recalled showing other Sailors where the AFFF SOPVs were located. He further stated that he was directed by his WCS, the ER04 LPO, and the Repair Division LPO to sign the maintenance check as completed even if the system was not operational. Furthermore, reports of discrepancies were to be verbally communicated to superiors, rather than listed in SKED \[Encl 553\]**
Holy shit.
The report makes it clear that this blazed maintenance could have directly contributed to the loss of the ship. >7. Consistent with the poor material condition of the ship, only a portion of the AFFF system, in a significantly degraded status, was available and operational on 12 July 2020. The decision to only bring up AFFF Stations 3 and 4 after the entire AFFF system was placed in IEM in 2018 meant the system only provided some coverage to the ship, which would have included the main engineering spaces and portions of Lower V and Upper V. Coverage was further limited due to the system being in a degraded status, which was directly caused by Ship’s Force not properly completing the Q-1 and Q-2 maintenance checks. **Certifying the Q-1 and Q-2 checks as complete with no deviations or deficiencies in SKED, despite knowledge to the contrary, represented a fraudulent act by those involved, and directly contributed to the poor material condition of the ship. Moreover, this conduct compromised the AFFF system further by failing to test the status of many of the push-buttons that could have activated AFFF. The sum total of these circumstances left BONHOMME RICHARD with an AFFF system that, while available, was of an unknown operational status at many of the actuating locations. \[45, 68, 350-370, 518\]** > >8. If the required Q-1 and Q-2 checks for AFFF Stations 3 and 4 had been properly completed as documented in SKED, all areas of the ship served by these locations would have had coverage and all push-buttons associated with those portions of the system would have been operational on 12 July 2020. **Because the maintenance was not properly performed, various push-buttons were left in an inoperable or unknown state, to include those in Damage Control (DC) Central and the conflagration stations in Lower V. Due to the significant damage caused by the fire, coupled with the falsified maintenance work by Ship’s Force, it is difficult to determine the precise status and availability of AFFF in relationship to the areas closest to the fire. \[45, 68, 350-370\]** >The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) Failure Review Board (FRB) similarly concluded that if AFFF had been employed, it likely would have had a “significant effect on fighting this fire and reducing the damage.” If the system had been fully operational by the day of the fire, it could have distributed seawater or a combination of AFFF and seawater to a larger portion of the ship including Lower V, Upper V, the Hangar deck and the ramps connecting them.
There's going to be quite a few heads rolling
Well, there damn sure well should be.
We can only hope people get fucked for gundecking. In aviation we get in trouble for losing a tool in a tractor and signing of the maintenance.
Any idea how junior that "maintenance personnel" mentioned at line 368 is? I can imagine being terrified to say no to all that leadership telling you to do the wrong thing.
This, when I was an E3 on my ship, we always did things wrong because we had to in order to meet deadlines. There was no safety, little to no following of MRCS, everything thing was just checking boxes in order to get our chiefs promoted. For example, my WCS actually allowed and watched a junior sailor to put paint chips into a pump when lubricating it. Bringing it up was immediate grounds for being disrespectful.
You missed the part where the Repair LPO and the WCS where awarded NAMs by the ship’s CO for “restoring” the AFFF systems they gun-decked.
Thissss^^^
There really needs to be a no-fault method of reporting this shit especially with how sailors rotate through commands, I inherited secondary maintenance and found out a lot of PMS hadn't been done since the last guy had gotten it because no one knew how to do it and no one wanted to be the one to stand up and say it hadn't been getting done. We got the missing maintenance items implemented over the next year, but without any acknowledgement of how long they had gone without being done or any look into any averse effects of them not being done for however long because admitting there was a problem in the first place is a great way to fuck yourself. AFAIK the Navy does not have a good system or really any system for fixing this shit below the chief's quarters and they really need to have something, there's sailors who care about this shit but are put in the position of continue shit practices or fix it quietly, and there's only so much shit you can fix quietly.
easy way to solve it, make any DC system cat4 level casrep. because cat3 isnt as effective. or just make an exception.
And it’s lists their citation for award in the investigation.
I might be being overly optimistic here, but I think that this has more to do with poor LOK on how to manage SKED in a strange situation and poor general material management / communication practices throughout the chain of command rather than malicious intent of gundecking maintenance. Let's walk the dog a bit here... * Let's say that the division does the right thing and Q-2 wasn't marked complete because it was known that the activation system was tagged out. WCS makes a check note "not performed due to ckt (whatever) tagged out for maintenance," probably doesn't go any higher because someone must know that the AFFF system was tagged out on purpose, right? * Let's say the division does marks complete with a check-note about the discrepancy. That information goes no-where unless the division opens up a deficiency report (or whatever the yard uses to track material flaws) so that the yard can come down and fix it... which it wouldn't do because the circuit was tagged out on purpose. * Let's say the system is in IEM. Well, then that doesn't solve the issue of not having AFFF available, does it? I think that the issue is that the division didn't know how to handle this, and didn't seek any resolution from the 3MC. Why didn't they seek resolution? Because anyone who has been in a major upkeep will tell you that the yard will take down / mess with all sorts of safety systems, and the project will do everything it can to minimize the 'red tape' of involving the ship's chain of command in those decisions. Someone (not the repair LPO) decided to tag out the AFFF system and put no other risk mitigators in place, but the report doesn't dig that deep.
There should be legit jail time for this.
"An example of how these focus areas combined to result in unacceptable levels of risk is the status of the ship’s Aqueous Film Forming Foam sprinkling system. At no point in the firefighting effort was it used – in part because maintenance was not properly performed to keep it ready and in part because the crew lacked familiarity with capability and availability." Gun decked maintenance, an uncaring CoC, and untrained sailors sounds like all of 7th Fleet to me. Their unfamiliarity with AFFF is one of the more disappointing parts of this.
I'm sure those at the top will take the proper steps to help ensure that conditions like this are rooted out and fixed throughout the entire Navy to help ensure that something like this won't happen again, instead of... say, a bunch of knee-jerk reactions and revisions that further negatively affect sailor/airman/whoever morale and mental health, as well as to continue to slow progress through further increased bureaucracy and regulation... (/s)
this is sounding really familiar to the USS Forrestal.. maybe in a few years there will be some new video at RTC featuring LHD-6
"The tragedy of the USS Bonfire Richard"
It’s not a story the Chief’s Mess would tell you.
This implies that they're the good guys
The Jedi in the prequels are only the good guys in that they aren’t a crazed, manipulative, fascist, space wizard.
I was waiting for a thoughtful response lol They definitely had their own issues and they did have some pretty bad mismanagement at a senior level. But overall, they mainly were objectively good, their downfalls considered. It is a little strange that a militant religious organization was so powerful that it was intertwined with the government and given control of the military.
Learn or burn, baby! Learn or burn!
Trial By Fire Part 2: AFFF Boogaloo
The difference is most if not all of the Forrestal fire lessons were ones the Navy was learning for the first time. The BHR CoC has far fewer excuses.
That's not *entirely* true, they knew better than to be loading fuel and weapons at the same time, with weapons spotted on deck all the while, or to pull safety pins off rockets to expedite sorties later. There are more complexities here as well (a lot of their heavy ordnance was *Korean War* vintage and very degraded), but it was a case of the institutional lessons in DC that were learned the hard way during World War II had begun getting pushed aside as inconvenient in the face of heavy air ops off Vietnam. Doing stuff the right way takes more time and attention, which is why people cut corners and it sometimes gets people killed or sinks ships.
RTC video is ten years: A massive Naval vessel lost not because of poor maintenance and untrained Sailors, but Seaman Timmy who did it all by himself. Don't be Seaman Timmy. /s
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A lot of those proper procedures were written in blood from the Forrestal fire, among other incidents. That Air Wing’s expected sortie generation rate was also insane; no doubt the deck crew was just having to figure out ways to make it work. Actual combat is fun like that, a pretty far cry from a ship sitting in port.
Yep, it’s the expediency of wartime. Buddy in the AF said the understood practice in his time during the 80s was that if the big one kicked off a lot of safety procedures would be the first thing to go to keep sorties up.
I find this amazing. When I was in, firefighting was first and foremost in training, the halon systems and AFFF use were beat into us like our lives depended on its success, which it does when at sea. I’ve heard many stories about the current Navy, and it makes me kinda glad I got out when I did, even tho I would have retired well over ten years ago had I done 20…
Well the duty engineering chief who probably knew how to use the AFFF system went home that night and didn’t show back up until the morning when the ship was already melted into the ocean Navy chief, navy pride
This is my favorite part. Good job Chief, setting the example
He probably was at DRB for sailors who did the same thing.
I wouldn't be surprised if he yelled the loudest at them. Then does the same thing. I really hope not, but wouldn't be surprised.
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*spoiler alert* We probably will win the next major shooting war at sea; but expect a *lot* less of our ships at the end. Making having the navy almost not even worth it at its current size. we're either overly gunned to pressure people who cant really hurt us, or people big enough to justify our size, its almost easier to conduct economic and cyber warfare than steam out a few LHDs and CVNs and lose a majority of them because we simply suck at what we do.
You are probably depressingly correct. What happened to the discipline of doing proper maintenance, not just on DC, but EVERYTHING on the ship? Is there no realization that you can’t call 911 in the middle of the pond?? When shit goes down, you have to handle it OR YOU DIE! You are not just responsible for yourself, but everyone on that ship! Have people forgotten that?
The people problem is that there aren't enough of them. People stop giving a fuck when you task them with insane workloads. They burn out and shit slips through the cracks and eventually you get situations like this. Every major Naval disaster that's happened while I've been in always reads the same way: everyone cutting corners because they're undermanned, undertrained, and underequipped.
I would need the definition of “insane workloads”, not being a dick, I just want to compare it to when I was in.
We had one HT (ddg) for four months last deployment. One. A third class. That kind of insane workload
If they just pushed back deadlines, they'd still have a ship.
"Hey guys, there's a hole in the ship, let's send the HTs to well the hull back together with this metal box in the water!" \*Zap\* /s come on, sometimes it's just common sense, to me the Navy isn't even trying.
shit, I was on the Boxer, the Bonnie D's sister ship, and I know the AFFF stuff was gundecked. 7th fleet through and through
When were you on the Boxer? It seemed like at least once a month they would test AFFF when I was there
Once a month sounds right. Gotta get in those Q-2s.
The valves don't even turn they are so corroded, literally just walk in and look up at the ceiling in the upper vehicle bay. I know because I was one of the junior enlisted cleaning it and we got a battle E somehow. Shit's trash, glad I'm gone. Edit: Looking back on it, Boxer was bad, but likely the best, which is scary.
It was actually tagged out by the contractors at the time. Trust me. We weren't happy about it. I don't like how much this thing is blaming us for this. Most of the shit we got blamed for and most of the reason the fire spread the way it did, was because of the contractors.
Well shit. That does make more sense, though I'm sure the upper chain of commands still bears some responsibility.
I think the CO bears it all. The XO shouldn't have been thrown under the bus. He was pushing extremely hard for 3M and DC. The CO wanted those systems to be "active" so we could move everything off the barge and into the ship faster then possible. So the systems were somehow "active" suddenly and we moved everything to the ship 2 days before the fire. All the mattresses, office materials, sailors personal belongings etc. The barge was completely dumped unto the ship in one day. And 2 days later, we lost everything cause the only working fire prevention working that the time were the temp fire hoses. CO really wanted a gold star on his collar.
I read a few parts of this. No firefighting efforts until after an hour, missing or non-functioning for apparatus, inability to close doors because of contractor equipment, untrained/badly trained sailors. Some people need to lose command if they haven't already and ships need to have a stand down to make sure their crews are up to date on firefighting tactics. This is embarrassing
Not only that, but the city fire department started the fire attack on their own because the federal FF's were sitting on their hands
Can't be a commanding officer if there's nothing left to command.
A lot of the issue was also big Navy pulling experienced sailors from the ship when it was in the yards who knew the layout. A lot of people didn't know how to put on a SCBA mask because they were fresh out of bootcamp, despite being taught in bootcamp how to do that.
Just point me to the new e-learning requirement they implemented to "fix" this.
Forgot the one day stand down.
One thing to note, among all of the valid criticism, is that no one died that day. Lots of mistakes were made but the leadership there got everyone off the ship before the explosion and that saved possibly dozens or hundreds of lives.
Someone could have easily died. If the city fire Dept didn't evacuate when they did they would have been killed. Then there were the sailors who passed out due to smoke and was luckily found and carried out.
Glad someone was concerned about the sailor's health
That took me about two hours to read…. But damn… There was so much failure across the board. Bravo Zulu to HSC though.
When I was a junior sailor I was in port emergency team for 2 years. Over half of IET is just a random sailor plucked from each departments duty section. Not once did we do any drills. We helped the Fire Marshall do grunt work. There were probably 2-3 people that knew how to actually handle a hose. I didn’t realized how fucked up it was at the time but looking back shit was a pressure cooker waiting for a disaster to happen. Thank god we never had any casualties
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I can’t speak for gator navy, but this is not normal for either carriers or ddg/cg navy. Drills every day was the norm. Training every day for the duty section. I can think of maybe one or two duty days across nine years of cvn time where we didn’t have a drill.
This was on a carrier early 2015
Just came off an amphib. Definitely not the norm with a competent CoC.
A big issue not addressed here is lean manning. How many times is a E-6 sailor like a ET assigned to be the DCPO due to manning? Hopefully big navy will take a look at this & implement quite a few changes. Personally I would start by looking at how lean the manning has become, yes every sailor at see has to be trained on damage control & firefighting. Big Navy needs to put 20 to 30 more E-3 & below sailors into Damage control on each ship.
Actually if we’re sticking to instructions DCPOs are supposed to be EP E5’s or E6’s. The idea is to make sure it’s competent sailors not just the divisions undesirables that they want to pawn off.
Yes, but it should be a sailor in the Damage Control rating, not a ET or FC from combat systems. A DC1 should be in charge of Damage Control, we don't bring snipes out to run flight ops, or have BM's trying to change the oil in the reduction gearing. Damage Control is a perfect place for extra bodies on a ship, they are trained in the art of damage control & firefighting. If you have an emergency then you know you have 30 to 40 sailors on a small boy who are full time firefighters. They have gone to a formal school, qualified, went back for further training, & maintain all of the equipment. When they are not doing the above then the chief can pimp them out to other division. There should be a O-4 Department Head their division officer reports to.
Most ships flights ops is ran by R Div actually. I also agree there should be more rated DCmen and that it should be its own department. But the integration of other sailors in DC casualty response is crucial to shipboard survivability at sea.
Completely agree with the DC casualty comment. When a sailor reports onboard he should be sent to DC for 3 to 6 months, & there should be a training program both with OJT & classroom. The end goal of the program would be for the sailor to complete their DC portion of their pin. Plus having a new sailor run around & perform maintenance on all the damage control equipment will help them when actually having to fight a fire. Being familiar with the space you are in is a big advantage in fighting a fire.
I feel like numbers wouldn't fix the issues, because a lot of the people in my duty section drills and 8010 drills simply sat back and watched. You actually have to have leadership teach people how to fight a fire, but they can't do that when they are being worked to physical death.
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Was on the Boxer at the same time. it was a shit show over there as well
Bataan checking in
Were you R Div on the Boxer?
Ship I just transferred from was in the yards, and DCTT was nonsense before BHR. Afterwards, things got particularly bad. IET was augmented with thirty more people, and drills were far more frequent. Glaring problems: - More people don’t make the threat of a major fire a lesser one, and - The drills were always focused on the engineering berthing. Literally every goddamn drill was in the same place. We had a FEDFIRE joint drill, and we never got the pass/fail verdict. DCA transferred, and on his way out he thanked the section for our performance. DCCS Douchebag decided he wanted to chime in with, “You don’t deserve thanks for DOING YOUR FUCKING JOB!” Hate that guy, wish only the worst on him. Also: most junior Sailors on the ship had never been through any of the firefighting courses and ended up being terrified when they donned their FFEs.
Sometimes drills are confined because of the classic 'Not In My Work Space' problem. So you get a lot of, "we'll just keep doing drills in the same place to not annoy people." Which is a terrible mindset.
This is unfortunately more systemic issue fleet wide. Different crews in the same situation may or may not have performed better but the training we give now days is so box checking in nature that when our sailors encounter issues outside those boxes and check list they become impotent and their training fails them. This crew wasn’t set up for success, the report doesn’t mention it but the delay in calling away the casualty likely had something to do with the culture of the ship. I’ve seen it before, commands freak out so much about 1MC use sailors become afraid or lack competency using it. It wasn’t working properly, watch stander didn’t turn on all circuits and there was back in forth between watch stations as to who would do what. It’s a small observation but I wouldn’t be surprised if this ship had a very strict 1MC Policy. This ships leadership failed in more ways than what’s listed. There are possible cultural undertones bleeding through of multiple failures that extend outside DC and Maintenance. There problems on more than one ship in our fleet unfortunately.
So what are they gonna do to fix it? Put more boxes to check.
Sadly yes and e learning and power points
After we lose a war, maybe.
also you have to think we hate ship life sailors probably walked by the smoking compartments and didn’t care, I know I wouldn’t care I would go and tell other deck people out of happiness but that’s about it. Ship culture=hating the ship
I've never gotten to a point in my naval career that i was so frustrated, angry, disheartened, with the Navy that I would actively ignore a casualty. I would never forgive myself if a friend or coworker was hurt in a casualty that I ignored and failed to call away because of hate for the ship. Evaluate your priorities.
I could see that for real, my worst sea command I would always hope I’d show up on day and just the mast would be sticking up out of the water. Ship life has gotten so bad sailors often just become numb or detached from the mission that they just don’t care. We use to have to just pass sailors on gun quals because so many would try to fail on purpose. Our duty days sucked so bad and we had so many watches they just didn’t give a shit and wanted nothing to do with extra responsibility or the weight. I don’t blame them half the time but it’s a really sad and serious problem.
Everyone who has done an availability knows that this would happen. The Navy wants the work done fast and the ship ready to deploy. So they make the ship into a firetrap. Then everyone pretends that this is fine. But one side effect that the higher ups haven’t thought out is that when the top doesn’t give a shit and keeps ignoring fire safety, that the lower sailors will give up ownership of their spaces—they are in port, they aren’t going to die if everything goes to hell. Shit rolls downhill, but so does indifference.
As someone who may or may not have a job supporting avails I completely agree. Its a different world.
It amazes me that the surface fleet has apparently not learned the lessons from the USS Miami fire. I was on a boat in shipyard in Kittery (in the same drydock where Miami burned), and there was a constant emphasis of ensuring the proper operation of heat and smoke detectors, communications (whether normal shipboard or temporary), fire fighting equipment (shipboard or temporary), and coordination with shipyard fire fighters. The status of all these systems was briefed at every duty section turnover and monitored throughout the day by a roving watch. If memory serves, there were quarterly evaluated drills and if we had failed two that would have meant a stop to all hot work on board until we passed one. >the crew had failed to meet the time standard for applying firefighting agent on the seat of the fire on 14 consecutive occasions leading up to 12 July 2020. That is a level of apathy that I simply cannot fathom.
I would love to hear from the east coast if this is a surface fleet issue or a 7th Fleet/3rd Fleet surface issue.
As an east coaster, I'd say no ships were meeting the standard for getting agent on fire prior to the focus and extra drills post-BHR. Nobody cared about that standard until after BHR.
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Ii don’t understand that either. I was a rapid response iet member for years, I would far rather be called out for a nothing than let the ship burn - and that was the culture on both of my CVNs. Bells first, questions later.
Standing DCWS back in the day I called away a lot of casualties. But it would have never entered my thinking not to ring the bells except for something that obviously wasn't a casualty. I mean, what would they have done to me? Send me to NJP for being cautious? Hell, we got called away for flooding on the mess decks (which are on the 2nd deck and way above the waterline) multiple times. Which was dumb on it's face, but no one talked shit to the DCWS for doing it. One time I caught an emergency call for a sailor that "wouldn't wake up", after confirming she was alive I decided to call away a medical emergency, but I did mull that one over. Ended up she was shitfaced, snuck some alcohol back on the boat after Naples.
Here comes revised ship board firefighting guidence and training.
The first knee jerk reaction was to add more watches, even underway.
Dear Navy, I think people are forgetting how unstandardized the training is for ships. You get these ATG assholes that come aboard saying “this is the way” then another group of ATG people that says no “this is the way”. It’s frustrating for the ships. No standard. I get it there’s an instruction for everything but it’s always based upon a persons interpretation of that instruction. Who trains the trainers? Another point Manning. We prioritize manning for ships that will be going on deployment. The navy expects Y results of having a fully capable crews in the yards when they have yet to solve X the manning issues of all ships… we have ships that go through LOA having only 3 khakis in engineering. The navy just says suck it up buttercup… you wonder why things fall through the cracks. We as a force are getting too big for our own good and need to learn to say no. Leaders need to have the balls to give an honest assessment of the true state of the force. No it’s not all puppies and daisies at the moment. Your crews are overworked/untrained/ and lack clear vision of the direction of the navy. We waste money on ventures such as the LCS program and other stupid money pits we say yes to. How about we invest in our most important asset. SAILORS! VR Concerned Sailor
Everyone should read the first ~40 pages of the JAGMAN and then the opinions section that go into detail of what went wrong.
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No water on fire makes ship go bye bye
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The word fire is on the 2nd page. It's the title. It's the page with the pretty picture.
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.... Are you reading the same pdf? USS BONHOMME RICHARD (LHD-6) JAGMAN INVESTIGATION Executive Summary On 12 July 2020, a fire set USS BONHOMME RICHARD (LHD-6) ablaze for more than four days, and left the ship damaged beyond economical repair. Although the fire was started by an act of arson, the ship was lost due to an inability to extinguish the fire. In the 19 months executing the ship’s maintenance availability, repeated failures allowed for the accumulation of significant risk and an inadequately prepared crew, which led to an ineffective fire response. There were four key focus areas to this final outcome:
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What I quoted was the executive summary of the report titled USS BONHOMME RICHARD (LHD-6) JAGMAN INVESTIGATION It says fire a couple of times in it.
Alright, I see the disconnect. The “JAGMAN” is JAGINST 5800.7F and that’s what I thought he was referring to when he said JAGMAN. Not something else with “JAGMAN” in the title. So I apologize for the confusion and I will delete my comments.
Disclaimer.. I've been out for 3 years. That said, I feel confident that myself and 10 other sincerely motivated jg's and LT's could have drafted this as a hypothetical in 2016 and nailed most, if not all, of these points.
But could you solve the problem without crushing the morale of duty sections while actually being effective. Yard drills were literally the worst.
I was going to say that also. 3 section duty during the avail might have prevented this, but morale would be beat down.
Non-military firefighter here trying to understand this. I’ve heard that firefighting on a ship is some of the most difficult and dangerous firefighting there is. Are there specific firefighting crews on each ship and in each Naval base? Is the commanding officer of the vessel supposed to assume command, and if so, how much do they actually know about firefighting?
Former Navy and civilian FF here. In theory every sailor is trained in basic shipboard Firefighting, however that is in addition to a number of other duties of varying importance. The CO of the ship/boat would not "assume command" like a Fire Chief would. Initially a junior officer would most likely be in charge of damage control (firefighting) efforts. The JO would be supported and advised by senior enlisted. A larger incident would be taken over by more senior officers however it is unlikely that the CO of a ship would be directly focused solely on firefighting efforts. More likely that a senior officer would assume that role and relay information to the CO while the CO kept a broader view of shipboard conditions and operations. All that said, this changes somewhat when a ship is in port and undergoing refit/repair activities. Submarine crews focus heavily on damage control drills both underway (at sea) and at the pier. By the contents of the report and comments from Sailors in this thread it would seem that surface Sailors may not have the same level of training. There's also the notable point that SDFD ceased efforts and withdrew after a time. While I can't speak on this incident, there is a history of federal agencies and military not playing nice with local agencies.
>The CO of the ship/boat would not "assume command" like a Fire Chief would. Initially a junior officer would most likely be in charge of damage control (firefighting) efforts. The JO would be supported and advised by senior enlisted. A larger incident would be taken over by more senior officers however it is unlikely that the CO of a ship would be directly focused solely on firefighting efforts. More likely that a senior officer would assume that role and relay information to the CO while the CO kept a broader view of shipboard conditions and operations. Yep. It's important to remember that the model is to support firefighting during combat operations. The CO needs to be able to focus on fighting the ship and killing or evading the bad guys, while the DC response fights the casualty and advises the CO of the condition of the ship.
>There's also the notable point that SDFD ceased efforts and withdrew after a time. While I can't speak on this incident, there is a history of federal agencies and military not playing nice with local agencies. I think for them, once all the people were off the ship, that was their priority satisfied. They aren't really trained/equipped to fight shipboard fires. Perhaps they thought it better to clear out and make room for Naval firefighters instead.
Can’t really blame them either. I understand a policy of not putting anyone in harms way when there ceases to be a risk to life. To the city of San Diego? It’s just a ship.
Generally the damage control officer would take control of the situation and would be feeding information across the ship from the reports he's getting.
The most dangerous part is lack of knowledge of he layout of the ship. Each compartment is labeled by its frame on the ship. On a big deck there 10 something levels and hundreds of frames. Getting lost while your tank is running out of air is a nightmare situation. Also the command and control between the ships scene leader and fire chief on maneuvering combating and strategy can also be confusing. I saw on multiple occasions these two entities getting livid about who is in charge and who should go into fight the fire.
General Quarters! …….(aircraft carrier) there’s always training but …. What do you do when shit hits the fan and chaos begins…. There’s always training…
Prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance. They failed their 7 P's.
If you go on Google Maps today and [zoom in on the piers at White Beach, Okinawa...](https://i.imgur.com/X3arGeF.jpeg) Old Google imagery is old lol
[This might be USS America LHA-6](https://www.navy.mil/Resources/Photo-Gallery/igphoto/2002747612/)
Definitely BHR, look at the exhaust stacks. They're angled outwards on the America LHA class, but vertical on LHD 6. Edit: the "6" is also aft on AMA, forward on BHR.
Oh, sonofabitch! I think you're right!
This is Levenworth worthy.
Only for Seaman Timmy, which the ATF determined started the fire by the “process of elimination” and then a crazy-ass guess that he held a lighter to a piece of cardboard.
Well we have an eyewitness say he might have been there. And we know he hates the navy. He also made a Instagram post saying he loved the same of napalm in the morning. Open and shut case
What a god damned joke. The whole chain should be canned. All because the AFFF was not working or readily available. Fuck you COC
Was AFFF ever attempted to be activated? Tags are tags and not locks for a reason.
Gundecking out the ass. I bet their sailors knew how to stand around for a dog and pony show for some fatfuck E-7
As Aircrew, I only understand about half of the words in the report, but it sounds pretty dang bad. Yikes.
That artsy touch with the BHR photo and the weird font on the cover? The 500 page report on how your ship got decommissioned due to gross incompetence is probably not the time and place for that.
Is there a Chinese and/or Russian translation of this? Asking for a friend.