That’s a $4 billion dollar warship burning … for over 4 days while sitting right at her home
port! USS Bonhomme Richard had been at Naval Base San Diego for almost 2 years, undergoing
upgrades to support the integration of F-35B aircraft. and that is when the fire broke out.
The damages were so extensive that the ship had to be decommissioned but, how could Bonhamme Richard
have been lost to fire in a shipyard environment, despite all the readily-available fire prevention
programs and resources? Well, ask USS Miami, a Los Angeles–class attack submarine which was
the victim of an onboard fire 8 years earlier, while undergoing overhaul at a shipyard in 2012,
resulting in her decommissioning. Turns out, to start a fire, you need oxygen,
fuel and heat … but for it to continue burning …
you need neglect, mismanagement and incompetence.
On Sunday, July 12th 2020, around 8 AM, a fire started in the Lower Vehicle deck
of the amphibious assault ship, USS Bonhomme Richard. The upper and lower
vehicle decks are basically storage areas for vehicles and other equipment aboard the ship.
Bonhomme Richard had been undergoing maintenance for almost two years. Now,
it’s very well-understood that the risk of fire during extended maintenance periods is
significantly higher than when the ship is operating at sea. This is because of all the
equipment and materials that contractors bring onboard, which can be flammable and combustible,
and the fact that some onboard systems may be temporarily out of service.
This was in fact the key takeaway from the investigation that looked into the
USS Miami fire in 2012, and resulted in development of policies and procedures,
namely the “8010 Manual”, an Industrial Ship Safety Manual for Fire Prevention and Response.
I suppose the key takeaway from the Bonhomme Richard fire investigation,
is that policies and procedures are no good, if they are not being followed and enforced.
Around 8:10 AM, a junior sailor who was walking through the upper vehicle deck,
that’s one level above where the fire was, noticed a “hazy, white fog” in the lower vehicle deck.
But because she didn’t smell smoke, she didn’t bother reporting it. She was one
of the approximately 138 sailors that were present that morning, 115 of which were on duty.
Shortly after, another sailor observed white smoke rising from the Lower V ramp and ran up
to tell the officer-of-the-deck about the smoke. But it was about 20 minutes after
the first sailor saw the white fog, that the fire was announced on the main public address circuits.
The announcement was delayed because sailors thought the smoke may have had a benign reason,
like smoke from starting a Diesel Generator, so they wanted to first investigate it.
That announcement was the first time that the Command Duty Officer or CDO learned
about the fire on his ship. The CDO is the person who is in charge of the ship in the
absence of the Commanding Officer. In this case, though, the person in charge was standing his
very first duty day as CDO. He stepped out and saw the crew gearing up to deal with the fire,
and immediately contacted the Commanding Officer, who was at home. But instead
of calling him, he sent him a text message. I’m guessing it looked something like this:
He also texted the Executive Officer. and even though the text message was seen by the commanding
and executive officers within a few minutes, I think anyone would agree, if someone's car,
house or, ship is on fire, you really should call them, not send them fire emojis!
We are already 30 minutes into this fire, and so far,
no firefighting efforts have been done. A fire can do a lot of damage in 30 minutes,
but forget about that, because it took almost 2 hours from the time the fire was reported,
until any fire suppression agents were deployed on the fire, by which time, the fire was basically
out of control. But the reasons that led to losing the ship will blow your mind …
When initial responders from Ship’s Force descended into the Lower V area,
no one shared the same understanding of what firefighting capabilities were actually online.
Because the ship was in maintenance, some of the systems were offline. For example,
more than 87% of the ship’s fire stations were out of service. The real problem,
however, wasn’t the quantity of fire stations that were in service. It was that nobody knew
which fire stations were active, and which ones weren’t. So sailors were going around
the ship unsuccessfully, trying to locate a fire station and hose that was in service.
Shortly after 8:30 AM, FedFire crew from Naval Base San Diego arrived at pier 2, where the ship
was berthed. All US Naval bases have federal fire departments onsite, called FedFire.
Interestingly, no one from Bonhomme Richards
had contacted FedFire. Someone working on base had noticed the smoke and called them.
You have to realize that now, in addition to the sailors who are trying to control the fire,
a second entity, which is FedFire, has shown up to help. It is critical that the firefighting
efforts of the sailors and FedFire are coordinated, and this requires a good leader.
Unfortunately the Command Duty Officer was on day 1 of his job. And when firefighters from FedFire
checked in with the CDO, they were not provided with any direction or actionable information.
So they got to work on their own, pulling their fire hoses nearly 30 feet vertically up the port
side Aircraft Elevator into the Hangar, to then go down the ramp to the upper V,
and then to the lower V, where the fire was. But they could have saved a lot of time and effort by
going into the sideport door, which was located further down the pier, and could have provided
immediate access to the Upper V. But that wasn’t communicated to FedFire at the time. The lack
of direction and leadership from Ship’s Force led FedFire to operate as an independent unit.
On top of that, the fire fighting hoses that FedFire had were not
compatible with the Navy’s fire fighting systems on the ship.
My understanding is that fire departments on Naval bases already know this, but somehow,
FedFire didn’t have the appropriate adapters to hook into the ship’s fire systems.
At 9:05, almost an hour into the fire, Bonhomme Richard’s Commanding Officer who had got the
text message arrived at Naval Base San Diego, and so did additional firefighters from various
municipal fire departments, which were organized under the San Diego Fire Department. But the
crew from FedFire and the crew from San Diego Fire Department didn’t have compatible radios,
so their efforts could not be integrated. A lot of the communication was happening using cell phones.
According to the investigation report, throughout the first three hours, and with rare exception,
there were no attempts by the Commanding Officer, the CDO, or other Bonhomme Richard leaders to
integrate civilian firefighters with the sailors. In fact, many of the ship’s personnel had assumed
that FedFire had taken control of the firefighting efforts. This was a total disorganization.
Around 9:15, the Bonhamme Richard leaders who were onsite, ordered sailors who didn’t have
proper breathing apparatus to evacuate due to significant growth of smoke.
By 9:30 AM, all Bonhomme Richard personnel had begun to evacuate.
But wait a second, if office buildings have sprinklers, shouldn’t ships also have some
sort of fire suppression system? Well they do. Bonhomme Richard was equipped with extensive
shipboard firefighting systems, including Aqueous Film Forming Foam or AFFF. AFFF works by producing
an aqueous film that spreads across the surface of the fire, suppressing flammable liquid vapor,
effectively suffocating the fire hazard. But on the day of fire, the AFFF was never
put into action, in part because maintenance was not properly performed to keep it ready and in
part because the crew lacked familiarity with capability and availability of the AFFF system.
At this point, combustible materials stored in Upper V had also ignited from heat radiating
through the lower V, creating additional fires. The San Diego Fire Department and its municipal
partners eventually engaged the fires in Upper V for approximately 45 minutes. FedFire also
joined them in their efforts. But shortly after 10:30 AM, the Incident Commanders of
both FedFire and San Diego Fire Department noticed the fire conditions were worsening,
and ordered the withdrawal of all firefighters from the ship. This was the right decision,
because at 10:50 AM, less than five minutes after the last firefighter had exited Bonhomme Richard,
a major explosion rocked the ship, blowing debris across the pier and knocking down
firefighters and Sailors. After the explosion, all personnel completely evacuated the pier.
Even though the firefighting efforts continued for 4 more days, using helicopters and tugboats,
none of it could bring Bonhomme Richard back. The earlier failures to either extinguish or contain
the fire caused some compartments to reach temperatures above 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit.
The interior of the ship’s superstructure, made of aluminum, melted completely in such heat,
converting into molten metal that flowed into the spaces below.
In the aftermath of the fire a number of things happened:
First and foremost, everyone was wondering how the fire had started. A young sailor was
suspected to have started the fire, and was under investigation. Although on September 30th, 2022,
more than 2 years after investigations began, a judge found the young sailor not guilty.
Other investigations looked into the reason behind the inability to extinguish the fire.
They found that during the 19 months that the ship was undergoing maintenance, repeated failures
allowed for the accumulation of significant risk and an inadequately prepared crew, which led to
an ineffective fire response. Basically the ship was not kept in good shape during maintenance,
the sailors assigned to the ship did not have the proper training to deal with the fire,
Naval Base San Diego had failed to ensure their firefighters were trained to properly
respond to a shipboard fire, and finally, the leadership provided by the commanders
across various organizations that were involved, had been ineffective.
Repairs to the ship were estimated to take up to 7 years and cost up to $3.2 billion dollars,
so the ship was decommissioned on April 15th, 2021 and sold to International Shipbreaking
Ltd. in Texas for $3.6 million dollars. After harvesting the undamaged parts by the Navy,
the ship would be broken up and recycled. A Wasp-class amphibious warship like Bonhomme
Richard was too large to transit the Panama canal, however during its preparation for towing
from San Diego, the aircraft elevators and the island were removed, which allowed the ship to
fit through the locks of the canal, making it a much shorter trip from California to Texas.
It remains to be seen whether the lessons learned from the loss of USS Miami and
now USS Bonhomme Richard, would prevent similar future incidents in shipyards.