With fire at sea a deadly threat, Navy stays prepared

By Kathy Adams

NORFOLK

The fire alarm blared.

"All hands man your battle stations!" shouted a voice over the intercom.

Twenty-two sailors sprang into action, pulling on protective suits, oxygen tanks, gloves and helmets. The intercom voice instructed the sailors, a firefighting team from the Norfolk-based destroyer Porter, to find what set off the alarm.

Two investigators headed below deck, returning a few minutes later to report fires burning in the supply room and combat information center. An even bigger blaze raged in the engine room, filling it with smoke and bringing the temperature to 225 degrees.

The first hose team descended into the room but stopped short when its hose got tangled above. A few minutes later, the two teams stood back-to-back trying to put out the flames with hoses pumping 95 gallons of water per minute.

Within 24 minutes, they'd extinguished the flames.

The fire had been a drill inside a three-story simulator at Norfolk Naval Station's Farrier Firefighting School. The team earned a satisfactory evaluation. If a similar fire erupted on the Porter, they'd be ready.

With fuels, hot equipment and other hazardous materials present aboard ships, fires are a daily risk, said Chief Warrant Officer Mike Redmond, director of the Farrier school.

So far this year, 13 fires have been reported on Navy subs and ships, including the May 22 fire aboard the aircraft carrier George Washington. That fire raged for hours, damaged electrical cabling and other components in 80 of the carrier's spaces and injured 24 sailors. The cause is still under investigation.

The Navy estimates repairs will cost $55 million, said John Scott, a spokesman for the Navy Safety Center. That's nearly five times the cost of all Navy fires afloat over the past five years.

There were 158 fires on Navy ships and subs between fiscal years 2003 and 2007, seven of which were "Class A" mishaps resulting in more than $1 million in damage, according to the safety center. Fires are the most common "Class A" mishap and are most often started by electrical problems.

"If the fire gets out of control, it basically could shut down your ship and eventually, if it's catastrophic enough, sink the ship and take lives," Redmond said. "What it does is it ultimately takes a ship off of a mission that could jeopardize national security."

Fire damage will prevent the George Washington from participating in the Rim of the Pacific exercise next week and has delayed it from taking over the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk's duties in Yokosuka, Japan. Repairs are expected to be complete in August.

That's why training sailors to contain and fight fires is so important, Redmond said. "Prevention is our first line of defense."

"Our job is one of the most important," said Fireman Brent Alan Carter, the Porter firefighting team's leader. "It's absolutely tremendous because we're responsible for all 300 lives on the ship."

Being unprepared could prove disastrous, a lesson the Navy learned in 1967.

On July 29 of that year, 134 sailors died fighting a fire that ignited on board the aircraft carrier Forrestal, homeported in Norfolk and operating in the Gulf of Tonkin. A rocket accidentally discharged and struck one of the carrier's aircraft, setting off a chain of fatal explosions and fires.

It changed the Navy forever.

"One of the lessons they learned from the Forrestal tragedy is that everyone needs to be trained," said Carolyn Anderson, a spokeswoman for Naval Personnel Development Command. "It completely changed how the Navy does training."

Now every sailor learns firefighting techniques during basic training. Prior to the Forrestal fire, only certain personnel had that training.

To better prepare its firefighters, the Navy has seven firefighting training facilities that offer instruction and evaluation. Norfolk's Farrier school is one of them. It trains 9,500 service members and civilians each year in basic and advanced shipboard and aircraft firefighting.

A ceremony at the Farrier school Friday will honor the Forrestal victims and mark the tragedy's upcoming 41st anniversary. The school is named after Chief Petty Officer Gerald W. Farrier, who tried to extinguish one of the Forrestal's aircraft with a portable fire extinguisher and died when one of its bombs exploded.

"He was a hero," said Stuart Carson, 66, a Virginia Beach resident who was an aviation ordnanceman on board the Forrestal during the 1967 fire.

"The strides they've made in the firefighting school and firefighting procedures, it's phenomenal," Carson said.

"A fire is a very, very horrifying thing, and it gives them the confidence to go in and it gives them the skills to fight that fire."

Kathy Adams, (757) 446-2583, kathy.adams@pilotonline.com