Posted on 07/13/2020 2:26:03 PM PDT by NRx
More than 400 sailors are working to put out the massive fire that continues to rage aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego and Navy officials are unclear how long the blaze might continue to burn.
The fire has brought down the amphibious assault ship's forward mast and caused other damage to the ship's superstructure that rises above its flight deck.
"There is a tremendous amount of heat underneath and that's where it's -- it's flashing up -- also forward, closer to the bow again there's a heat source and we're trying to get to that as well," Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck, the commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 3 said at a news conference Monday in San Diego.
More than 400 sailors are working to put out the massive fire that continues to rage aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego and Navy officials are unclear how long the blaze might continue to burn.
The fire has brought down the amphibious assault ship's forward mast and caused other damage to the ship's superstructure that rises above its flight deck.
"There is a tremendous amount of heat underneath and that's where it's -- it's flashing up -- also forward, closer to the bow again there's a heat source and we're trying to get to that as well," Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck, the commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 3 said at a news conference Monday in San Diego.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Lot of aluminum on that boat and those like her....those fires hard, hard to put out.
Pardon me for asking, but isn’t the boat in a harbor, which is made of water, which puts out fires?
Can it be repaired? Does not look like it.
This is quite bad.
I hope she isn't a total loss, starting to look like it.
Just awful.
This almost has me suspecting fowl play....
I don’t know a whole lot about shipboard firefighting but when a fire is layered, like between decks, it’s awful hard to get the water to the fire.
It’ll be put out when it starts melting and sinks into the harbor. Then the fires will go out. Read up on the French ship Normandie that burned at her pier in New York harbor.
You certainly know more than me, which isn’t saying much.
“Pardon me for asking, but isn’t the boat in a harbor, which is made of water, which puts out fires?”
The fire is all over the ship now. But if it starts to threaten the fuel bunkers then I would expect them to scuttle her and sink the ship at the pier. That would put a wall of water between the fire and the ships fuel reserves. But it would also all but condemn the ship to the scrapyard.
A lot of men on or connected to that ship are seeing their career plans go up in a puff of smoke. Just saying you were a part of the crew on USS Bonhomme Richard may be less than a resume enhancer for a while. The Navy is big on affixing blame rather quickly. Maybe all branches of our military are that same way. They are, after all, a business concern.
Sometimes, an accident is simply that, an accident of circumstance. There will be mucho checking of records. Who was doing what when, and with whom? Don’t lose those records!
Why not just deliberately scuttle it now, before it melts. You may be able to salvage something.
Hi. Just wanted to let you know the image I posted in # 2 is within the public domain. It came from Wikipedia not the news source.
This may not be what they used to call “Alpha Fire” that can be quickly defeated with water.
It may be more chemically fueled.
I wonder how deep the water is below the keel. If it doesn’t sink far enough it’ll still keep burning. I bet it’s melting inside. Anyone know how it started?
An explosion would do that and worse.
Well...ships are built to keep the ocean water on the outside of the hull.
There was a submarine that some yard worker set on fire in New Hampshire I think. And there was a minesweeper ran around in the Philippines. They wrote both of those off.
Not sure if they still do it, but in the old days anytime a CO lost a ship, no matter what the circumstances, there was a courts martial. Often it was pro-forma, especially in wartime. But the Navy did not want anybody thinking the loss of a ship would be treated lightly.
The Rear Adm said there are areas they can’t see or get to, but they can detect heat there. Seems like bad news.
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