Just saw a report on ABC news that said what crew was on board was evacuated pretty quick. That just sounds odd to this ex sailor. I can’t wait to hear the exact details of this fire.
I’m a little bit uncomfortable with the fact there are apparently no major injuries amongst the hospitalized crew. That is a good thing, obviously, but it appears they abandoned the ship very quickly and now a $1.5 billion ship is burned to the waterline.
The crew was fortunate to be docked alongside a pier facilitating their safe exit. Having served a couple of years on a warship in the USN, including 10 months off the coast of Vietnam, I have no problem with the crew getting to safety as quickly as possible.
So if a ship is in port with just a duty section on watch if the going gets tough you evacuate?
As a young sailor we were taught that you fight to save the ship. Either that isn’t taught anymore or the rules are different if you are in port. I understand the fire started in the well deck. My old ship also had a well deck that ran nearly the length of the entire ship. We had a salt water wash down system that would drench the entire well deck. You could also ballast and flood the well deck. If it started in the turnaround which is a level up so vehicles could go up to the hangars we had sprinklers lining the walls. If the fire spread to the ship couldn’t they have isolated and re-evaluated? Whatever was needed to save the ship. The timeline as presented so far seems to have the crew evacuating really quick. So if this had happened at sea what would the command have done with no where to go but overboard? As an ex boiler tech who was on the fire response squad that would react to fires in any of our main spaces I have so many questions.