Explosion in US Navy Ship in San Diego

[viper37]

Officials investigating after 21 sailors, civilians injured in naval ship explosion

More than a dozen sailors and several civilians have been hospitalized following an explosion on a Navy ship in San Diego on Sunday, officials said.

A fire broke out aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard sometime around 8:30 a.m. local time, said officials with the Naval Surface Forces. The blaze escalated to a three-alarm fire, according to the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department, which assisted in battling the fire along with base and shipboard firefighting teams.

Seventeen sailors, as well as four civilians, are being treated at a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, Mike Raney, a spokesman for the Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, confirmed to ABC News Sunday afternoon.

everal of the injuries were said to be serious while others were from smoke inhalation, officials said.


A defense official told ABC News that 19 federal firefighters have also suffered at least minor injuries fighting the blaze.

There were 160 sailors aboard at the time the fire started, and the entire crew is off the ship and accounted for, Naval Surface Forces said.

All SDFD responders have also been accounted for, officials said.

The USS Bonhomme Richard, currently undergoing maintenance, has a crew size of about 1,000, Raney said.

At a press conference Sunday evening, Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck said the origin of the fire appeared to be in the lower cargo hold of the ship. It was unclear what caused the explosion, but that there is a "low risk for secondary explosions," he said.

Authorities have cleared a 1,800-foot perimeter around the ship and are monitoring the temperature of the ship and the air quality, Sobeck said. The U.S. Coast Guard has also closed San Diego Channel south of Coronado Bridge to all boating traffic, he said.

Officials told ABC News it would likely be very hard to put the fire out. Local, base and shipboard firefighting teams were responding, officials said.

"All in-port ships have been contacted and directed to provide fire parties to possibly assist with firefighting efforts," Raney said.

Two firefighting teams were working on board the ship to contain the blade, Federal Fire San Diego Division Chief Rob Bondurant said in a statement released late Sunday afternoon local time.

"Federal Fire is rotating their crews aboard the ship with U.S. Navy firefighting crews from the waterfront to fight the fire in order to find the seat of the fire and extinguish it," he said, adding that Navy Region Southwest tug boats are also battling the fire from the water.

a large ship in a body of water: Smoke rises from a fire on board the U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard at Naval Base San Diego, Calif., July 12, 2020.© Bing Guan/Reuters Smoke rises from a fire on board the U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard at Naval Base San Diego, Calif., July 12, 2020.
Two neighboring Navy ships -- the USS Fitzgerald and USS Russell -- have since moved away from the fire.

The origin of the fire is pending investigation.

[grumbler]

From what I am hearing, I am getting bad vibes about this fire.  There should not have been anything flammable in that area...unless it was placed there deliberately.

BHR is coming out of refit, and somebody might not want to go through a deployment cycle.

[viper37]

From what I am hearing, I am getting bad vibes about this fire.  There should not have been anything flammable in that area...unless it was placed there deliberately.

could it be from the repair equipments they were using? mishandling of such equipement, if they were working in that area?

I don't know much about ships, but seems to me like the cargo area of a ship undergoing repairs should be relatively empty?

[viper37]

Never mind, I have my answer, no one was supposed to be working in the area:
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/07/13/two-decks-separate-bonhomme-richard-fire-1m-gallons-of-fuel-admiral-says.html

I guess you're right, it does give a bad vibe

[...]
At least two decks stand between the fire and the roughly 1 million gallons of fuel on the big-deck amphib at Naval Base San Diego, Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck, commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 3, said Monday.
[...]
About 160 people were on the Bonhomme Richard when the fire started Sunday morning in the ship's lower cargo hold, known as the "Deep V." The ship was undergoing maintenance at the time, though Sobeck said he didn't believe anyone was working on that area when the fire broke out.

[KRonn]

I saw in a news report that the fire suppression system was inactive due to the ship being in overhaul/maintenance. I don't know if that makes sense. Also that the ship is not carrying any ammo but it has been burning for a couple days now. It's a bit unsettling though that a Navy ship could be lost while sitting in port given all the outside fire fighting resources that should be available.

[Razgovory]

From what I am hearing, I am getting bad vibes about this fire.  There should not have been anything flammable in that area...unless it was placed there deliberately.

BHR is coming out of refit, and somebody might not want to go through a deployment cycle.

I'm really interested in your opinion on this.  You are the Languish navy guy.

[grumbler]

I saw in a news report that the fire suppression system was inactive due to the ship being in overhaul/maintenance. I don't know if that makes sense. Also that the ship is not carrying any ammo but it has been burning for a couple days now. It's a bit unsettling though that a Navy ship could be lost while sitting in port given all the outside fire fighting resources that should be available.

The problem is getting access to the spaces where the fire is.  Ships are built to be watertight, so you can't spray water on the top and have it trickle down, like in a building fire.  You have to cool down watertight doors enough to open them, when the fire on the other side is trying to do the opposite.

I think the ship will be written off.  The fire has gone on too long and is too hot to not have degraded the hull integrity.  De-tempered steel isn't nearly as resilient as tempered structural steel.  If the ship weren't 23 years old, a rebuild might be worth it, but it is 23 years old and had only a limited service life remaining in things like the main engines, elevators, etc.

[viper37]

I think the ship will be written off.  The fire has gone on too long and is too hot to not have degraded the hull integrity.  De-tempered steel isn't nearly as resilient as tempered structural steel.  If the ship weren't 23 years old, a rebuild might be worth it, but it is 23 years old and had only a limited service life remaining in things like the main engines, elevators, etc.

assuming the Navy writes off the ship, in a case like this, can they still recycle the steel for future use in another ship, or would it be too degraded to be able to do anything with it?  I mean, like usual recycling, sort of re-melting the steel.

[PDH]

It can be used in the finest grade Chinese knives.

[The Brain]

It's all dinosaur pee anyway. Or was that water?

[viper37]

It can be used in the finest grade Chinese knives.

[grumbler]

I think the ship will be written off.  The fire has gone on too long and is too hot to not have degraded the hull integrity.  De-tempered steel isn't nearly as resilient as tempered structural steel.  If the ship weren't 23 years old, a rebuild might be worth it, but it is 23 years old and had only a limited service life remaining in things like the main engines, elevators, etc.

assuming the Navy writes off the ship, in a case like this, can they still recycle the steel for future use in another ship, or would it be too degraded to be able to do anything with it?  I mean, like usual recycling, sort of re-melting the steel.

I'm not 100% sure what the status is of shipbreaking (i.e. recycling) is right now.  For a while, scrap values were negative, so the USN mostly sank their ships either in weapons testing or as part of the creating of artificial reefs.  Ex-nuclear ships can't be recycled so are sunk in SINKEXs. 

Other ships mostly go into reserve before being scrapped, but that obviously would not happen here.  I suspect the steel in her is worth the scrapping.  Ironically, NASSCO, where Bonhomme Richard was overhauled, is also a scrap yard.