Four injured in submarine fire at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard

WMTW ^ | May 23, 2012

[george76]

Four people have received medical attention in connection with a fire on a nuclear-powered submarine at a Maine shipyard, but none of the injuries were serious.

Fire crews are fighting the blaze on the USS Miami SSN 755 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on an island in Kittery near Portsmouth, N.H.

...

The ship's reactor was not operating at the time of the fire, which was reported at 5:41 p.m., the release said. The reactor was not affected by the fire.

[JRandomFreeper]

Thank God no-one was injured. I've watched sub fire-drills and that's frigging scary when it's a drill on dry land.

/johnny

[Thrownatbirth]

Sounds like MIAMI is in a long availability period, so no immediate operational impact. SUBFOR ain’t happy, though.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Nasty news. Spoken as a guy who runs turbine overhauls, and used to run submarine overhauls in that kind of shipyard.

NAVSEA08 ain’t happy either.

This will will make the rest of the Navy overhauls much more expensive, more difficult, harder on the crew too, and much slower.

[Pollster1]

This will will make the rest of the Navy overhauls much more expensive, more difficult, harder on the crew too, and much slower.

If we're lucky, and we probably are, the shipyard workers were doing something stupid in violation of existing safety procedures. Maybe they were welding without a fire watch on the other side of the bulkhead, or something similar, and we'll get away with just a renewed focus on existing safety procedures.

[dfwgator]

If we're lucky, and we probably are, the shipyard workers were doing something stupid in violation of existing safety procedures.

I assume they were Union workers.

[Pollster1]

I assume they were Union workers.

I assume so because (1) it was PNS, and (2) they set the ship on fire.

[SpinnerWebb]

a little tit for tat, maybe?