Fire on USS Miami
Jonn e-mailed me yesterday and asked me if I knew anything about the fire that was on USS Miami which broke out Wednesday evening and burned for almost 12 hours. Unfortunately, several firefighters and a couple of the sailors were hurt fighting the fire, but none of the injuries were serious and all have been treated and released. A summary of what went down can be found in this link from the Portsmouth (NH) Herald.
No cause and no dollar estimate is yet available for the fire that swept through the forward compartment of the nuclear-powered submarine beginning just before 6 p.m. Wednesday, but the damage was described as “extensive.”
Navy officials sealed the damaged part of the submarine and as of Thursday afternoon had not gone below.
“They don’t want to introduce any oxygen until they’re sure the fire can’t reignite,” said Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, who toured the site Thursday afternoon.
It was unclear on Thursday whether USS Miami would be able to return to service. Breckenridge said Thursday it was too early to say if the sub could be salvaged.
But usually it boils down to two things–hotwork and inadequate fire watches for same.
York Beach Fire Chief Dave O’Brien said his firefighters were providing backup at the shipyard fire station and were not directly involved in battling the blaze. However, he said, he has worked at the shipyard in submarines and has a sense of what happened.
“It’s a confined space with one way in and one way out, so whatever you do it’s much more difficult than fighting a building fire,” he said.
He said most air packs last for 30 minutes, so there had to be a continuous flow of firefighters in and out. “You only have minutes to do something and then you have to get out and someone else has to go in.”
“From what I know of submarines and firefighting, it’s a whole different world in there,” he said.
Congrats on your award for Underestatement of the Year, Chief. Nothing quite says “pucker factor” like shipboard fires, and on a submarine it’s that much worse since there’s no place to go. I’ve been involved with a minor fire in shipyard on my first boat (started in AMS versus Torpedo Room on Miami) and I was on watch in the Engineering spaces, and even then the smoke from a fire that was put out in less than a minute was acrid and thick. There’s some speculation as to whether or not USS Miami will even be salvageable, but in any event, I hope the crew of the Miami likes it up here in New Hampshire/Maine, because their 20-month overhaul just got a lot longer.
Category: Politics
Sparky, any word on whether it was Sailors or yard birds who were doing the hot work (if it was caused by hot work, which makes sense being in a yard period)?
No “official” word yet, but I’ve yet to run into a shipyard fire of this magnitude that WASN’T caused by yard work.
One thing brought up is the fact that the ship’s battery is directly below the origin of the fire, and while the battery hatch is SUPPOSED to be waterproof, there’s an awful lot of stored energy in a fully-charged battery.
About the only fires I can think of that might approach this severity in “normal” operations is the Bonefish fire (electrical) in 1989-ish, and the Sargo (Oxygen generator) fire back in the early 1960’s.
In the case of the Bonefish, the damage was too severe and they decommed after they got her back to port. The Sargo fire, being pure oxygen, they sank her at the pier. Both of those fires involved loss of life.
There was a fire on board one of the Merchant Marine ships that tied up at the pier in Kuwait. We weren’t directly involved as we were just doing security but I know they had a stream of ambulances come through our checkpoint at least a few with casulaties. I was on a check point that wasn’t at the pier itself so I never saw anything but I was told that it got so bad at one point that they actually got the ship underway to keep it from screwing up the harbor if it sank (I assume). They finally did get it under control but it sounded like a near run thing. Can’t remember the name of the ship. Any Navy guys at Shuaiba in 2004 might know.
Who cares about the condition of the sub, as long as all our sailors are OK that, to me, is all that matters. They can always order another boat!
From what I’ve been able to learn through my contacts, word on the street is that USS Miami is not likely to be salvageable. Now, THAT is speculation because it’s not official from the Navy, and won’t likely be for awhile now.
But word from those in the know isn’t good. This is bad news in that it comes at a time when submarines are becoming an endangered item, and although she’s an older 688-class boat, she’s still a fast attack and we are rapidly reaching a point where our Navy cannot afford a single loss.
Additionally, the Ohio Class have only about 14 more years before they start getting pulled out of the water and we STILL don’t have any firm plans for a replacement SSBN-X.
@5- one of the shipyard periods I had on the ‘Dub, we were tied next to the drydock that contained the Kearsarge. Kearsarge caught on fire bad enough that she had to pull our duty section over to help get it under control. She only burned for 2 or 4 hours if I recall, and it warped the shit out of their flight deck, extending their drydock time a few months.
If a blaze can sag a flight deck in that amount of time, with all of it’s supporting bulkheads, void spaces and framework, I imagine a 12 hour fire would play all kinds of hell on the integrity of a pressure vessel. With the navy looking to trim it’s budget anyway, it seems likely that Miami is done.
Sadly, Tim, even though she’s 22 years old, she’s not exactly an “older” boat compared to the rest of the SSN fleet.
And yeah, the speculation is that they’ll take a good hard look at her and then scrap her, but then again, I said the same thing after the San Fran did a flank bell into a seamount and she’s still around, although these days she’s known as “Frankenboat.”
And Yat–we were in the 2 SSN’s a year for about 5 seconds. With the cuts, we’re now down to 1 SSN, and some years not even that.
[…] TAH readers likely remember NHSparky’s previous articles on the USS Miami arson incident. In that incident, a shipyard worker – Casey James Fury […]