Free Republic

The Navy's top officer says that the fires that burned for four days on the Wasp class amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard last week left 11 of its 14 decks damaged and its island effectively gutted. Meanwhile, there has been a rash of other fire incidents aboard other U.S. Navy ships undergoing work in recent days. A shipyard in Virginia where Navy ships are repaired has resumed normal operations after halting work following a thankfully much less severe fire on Bonhomme Richard's sister ship, USS Kearsarge. Another fire broke out on the future USS John F. Kennedy, a Ford...

NEW ORLEANS – A bolt of lightning struck the ship capturing oil from a blown-out BP well in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, igniting a fire that halted containment efforts in another setback for the embattled company in its nearly two-month struggle to stop the spill, the company said. The fire was quickly extinguished and no one was injured. BP said it hopes to resume containing oil from the well sometime Tuesday afternoon. The fire occurred on the Discoverer Enterprise, where engineers are siphoning about 630,000 gallons of oil a day through a cap on top of the well....