Leadership and seamanship failures doomed the Bonhomme Richard

It used to be that basic maintenance, basic damage control, and advanced damage control were mandatory. In fact, Sailors that did not get basic maintenance and basic damage control qualified within a qualification time frame were administratively restricted to the ship. They did not go on liberty, or go home, until they achieved qualification.

Basic maintenance is required as equipment needs to be checked for serviceability, operability, etc. Basic damage control involves knowing how to use the different equipment that would be needed to address ship threatening emergencies. Advanced damage control expanded on this training.

The Navy conducted two main types of fire drills, “at sea” and “import”. These drills were conducted frequently, even during availabilities. They could range from a simple problem involving a fire or a flood in a room, to massive multiple front firefighting or flooding scenarios.

The ship had internal graders that conducted and graded these drills. Additionally, there were graders that came from outside the ship to grade these activities. The “ultimate test” was a training mission to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Here, the ship stayed until it got certified to do everything it needed to do during a deployment.

It appears that this emphasis has declined. A report of the fire on the Bonhomme Richard showed a failure in basic maintenance, basic damage control, and advanced damage control. It showed a failure in both leadership and in basic seamanship. For example, Sailors did not know how to use, or were not aware of, items that could have been utilized to slow the spread of the fire.

From USNI News:

Material Condition. Throughout the maintenance period, the material condition of the ship was significantly degraded, to include heat detection capability, communications equipment, shipboard firefighting systems, miscellaneous gear clutter, and combustible material accumulation. To illustrate the extent of degradation, on the morning of the fire, 87% of the ship’s fire stations remained in inactive equipment maintenance status.

Training and Readiness. The training and readiness of Ship’s Force was marked by a pattern of failed drills, minimal crew participation, an absence of basic knowledge on firefighting in an industrial environment, and unfamiliarity on how to integrate supporting civilian firefighters. To illustrate this point, 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.

Shore Establishment Support. The integration and support expected by the shore establishment did not adhere to required standards. Southwest Regional Maintenance Center (SWRMC) did not meet their requirements associated with fire safety and, in doing so, failed to communicate risk to leadership while facilitating unmitigated deviations from technical directives. Naval Base San Diego (NBSD) failed to ensure its civilian firefighters were familiar with Navy vessels on the installation, verify they were trained to respond to a shipboard fire, or effectively practice how to support Ship’s Force and simultaneously integrate responding mutual aid assets.

Oversight. Ineffective oversight by the cognizant Commanders across various organizations permitted their subordinates to take unmitigated risk in fire preparedness. A significant source of this problem was an absence of codification of the roles and responsibilities expected by each organization in their oversight execution.

Common to all four focus areas was a lack of familiarity with key policies and requirements along with procedural non-compliance at all levels of command from the unit level to programmatic, policy, and resourcing decisions. 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.

USNI News has an article here that includes the official report. Fox News and other sites also talk about this event.

Category: Navy