Posted on 10/12/2004 2:59:12 AM PDT by Clive
GLASGOW, Scotland (CP) - The weary captain and crew of the stricken HMCS Chicoutimi told tales of heroism, fear and survival Monday in their first public recounting of the fire aboard their sub, with some expressing wonderment that they lived to tell of their ordeal.
Last Tuesday's blaze aboard the sub, and the ensuing heart-pounding efforts of the crew to douse it through a shroud of dense smoke, were "probably one of the worst nightmares you can have as a submariner," Cmdr. Luc Pelletier told a news conference in this Scottish city.
"If you can imagine inside the submarine, being confined (to an area) full of smoke, being tossed from one side to the other ... those were very difficult circumstances," he said.
Some of Pelletier's charges - men Pelletier has described as "rock stars" - told of a fire much more serious than initially thought, and one that later claimed the life of their crewmate, Lieut. Chris Saunders.
"I went down the conning tower and it was just like going down a black chimney," said Lieut Sebastien Latulippe, the ship's sonar operator. "Everything was black. The forward part of the control room was black, burned. There were no lights down there. It was very scary."
Latulippe added: "I can't believe we're still here."
Lieut-Cmdr. Douglas Renken, 38, one of nine smoke inhalation victims, recalled frantically trying to get to his air-purifying mask after the fire broke out and within seconds flooded much of the submarine with black smoke.
"I took about two or three gulps of bad air before I got a mask and there was one point when I thought: 'I'm not going to get another breath of air out before I find one,"' he said. "There was a fleeting moment when I questioned whether this was going to be it."
Another crew member, Francis Couture, said many crew members didn't have time to grab purifying masks in the frantic moments of darkness and chaos following the fire.
"The power was immediately cut onboard the submarine, almost immediately. So we had no electricity on board, no visibility," he said.
"Many of us were given masks but we didn't have the time to put them on so we had to escape the flames to get to a place that was safe enough to finally get a mask from a member of the crew."
The ship's executive officer, Lieut. Peter Bryan, provided some clues as to how the blaze might have started. He was in the control room when a nearby panel exploded in a shower of sparks.
The fire, from his vantage point, was coming out of the captain's cabin, located just off the control room.
"That's where we saw the sparks and the flashes," said Bryan, 38, a native of St. Catharines, Ont.
"Most of us thought when's this going to stop?"
The cause of the blaze remains a mystery, but Bryan also said that "a small electrical defect" occurred prior to the outbreak of the fire.
But he couldn't say whether it was related to the fire because navy officials "were in the process of searching it down."
An emotional Pelletier told of Saunders' final hours.
"He was in one of the compartments where we had a fire," Pelletier said. "He was overtaken initially by that cloud of smoke ... that's normal in such a constrained space."
"He did his best to be able to do the things that he needed to do but was overcome by smoke."
Pelletier wiped his eyes while expressing his sympathy for Saunders' wife, Gwen, during the televised news conference.
He said Saunders, who had only joined the Chicoutimi crew two weeks earlier but was a much-loved addition, seemed to be OK in the hours after the fire as he and two of his crewmates were monitored closely by the sub's medical team.
"He was breathing on his own without a mask and the signs were looking better," Pelletier said.
Another team of medical specialists from the British frigate HMS Montrose came on board, he said, and agreed with the Chicoutimi's crew that the three men should taken to hospital. Saunders was pronounced dead at the Irish hospital where his two crewmates are still recovering.
Just before Saunders was airlifted from the sub in treacherous conditions, Pelletier said, the Halifax father of two was able to speak, although he was exhausted.
"He was in pain of course but he was still cognizant and we were able to talk to him," Pelletier said. "We had to remain optimistic ... we were definitely hoping that everything was going to turn out well."
He said the crew "took it pretty hard" when they learned Saunders didn't make it. Latullippe said Monday there was "just silence throughout the ship" when they learned what happened.
The crew did not mark Saunders' death until they arrived in Scotland on Sunday, where they gathered at the one end of the jetty at the Faslane naval base.
"We as a group stood there," said Latullippe, his voice breaking and tears welling in his eyes.
They gave thanks "for making it ashore alive, and we took a minute."
Pelletier defended his ship, rejecting suggestions that it was not seaworthy when it set off on its "maiden" voyage from Scotland to Halifax on Oct. 2.
"This was a tried submarine," he said.
Of the four submarines purchased from Britain in 1998 by the Canadian navy, the Chicoutimi "was the only one that was able to start sea trials" and complete them successfully, he said.
"From August, we underwent a process and we did various trials and there was no reason to do business otherwise," he said in response to a suggestion that the Chicoutimi should have had an escort ship when left for Canada.
Pelletier also met Monday with the captain of the British task force that rescued his submarine.
He and Royal Navy Cmdr. Andrew Webb met in the lobby of the Hilton hotel in Glasgow.
They shook hands and hugged as if they were old friends.
Dressed in civilian clothes, the two captains then promptly left staff behind to go have a pint together.
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The age of wooden ships may have passed but the age of iron-men has not. RIP
BZ
It is looking more and more that the decision to buy the Upholder class submarines was not as bad a decision as we are holding it out to be.
It would have been nice to have bought new-construction nukes but that would have required a capital outlay that no Liberal government and probably no Conservative government would have been able to politically sustain and would have been to the further detriment of other needed military purchases.
And the state of the vessels is proving out to have been not as decrepit as press reports have made them out to be, mostly wear and tear that are really subject matter for refit, not for rejecting the boats.
I am holding judgment on the refit decisions until I have more information, hopefully from a Board of Inquiry.
Meanwhile, we owe a big Bravo Zulu to HMS Montrose and the other UK and US naval units in company, and to the ocean rescue tugs Anglian Prince (UK) and Carolyn Chouest (US).
Of the four submarines purchased from Britain in 1998 by the Canadian navy, the Chicoutimi "was the only one that was able to start sea trials" and complete them successfully, he said.
Enough said.
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