USS Bonhomme Richard Fire - Early Lessons

I’m sure you’ve all seen the news about the massive fire on the USS Bonhomme Richard, LHD-6, which engulfed most of the ship and burned for a day and a half.  The ship has been gutted, the superstructure is just a deformed shell, the forward mast has collapsed, and the damage list goes on and on.  I would be shocked if the Navy doesn’t scrap the ship.

In due course, the Navy will publish a report citing the usual litany of failures to follow established procedures, waivers of safety requirements, inadequate personnel, inadequate training, etc. and will conclude with a long list of recommendations, few of which will ever be implemented, and most of which will be paperwork related.  Nothing will actually change.  The Navy has had many dockside fires (remember the USS Miami fire) and has taken no significant preventative action before so why should this time be any different?  That sad reality aside, let’s see what lessons we can glean from this event even now, before the report comes out.

Manning - This is why you don’t send ships into combat (or even on peacetime patrols or into dockside maintenance!) with minimal manning crews.  Despite the use of 400 firefighters and the assistance of the San Diego Fire Department, the fire on the BR remained uncontrolled and spread widely for well over a day.  Had the ship been at sea with just its crew and no outside assistance, the ship would have been lost for sure.

The following statement demonstrates the manpower needs for serious damage control.  Note the statement of 400 sailors involved in the effort and the fire still spread out of control.

Some 400 sailors have been fighting the fire aboard the ship since the fire started “to make sure we make every effort to save that ship,” he [Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck, commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 3] added. (2)

Ships are loaded with explosives, fuel, and other highly combustible materials.  Fire is always a moment away and a full damage control complement is the only thing that can possibly save a ship.  Injury count is up to around 60 – mostly smoke inhalation and heat exhaustion.  Excess bodies are required to fight fires and replace fallen damage control crew – and there will be fallen damage control crew (see, "USS Stark, Missile Inbound").  Minimal manning is a guarantee of lost ships in battle.

Zumwalt, with a minimal manning crew of around 140 will be unable to perform damage control.  A single fire in combat will mean the loss of the ship. 

Automated Firefighting – Navy ships have extensive automated firefighting systems.  In this case, reports indicate that the Halon firefighting system was deactivated.

A fire suppression system was inoperable when a blaze erupted aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego, so sailors fought the blaze with water, a top Navy official said Monday.

Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck said the Halon gas system had been turned off because it was being worked on while the amphibious assault ship was undergoing maintenance work. (3)

I would expect that there were other fire suppression systems in addition to Halon and I have heard nothing about their status.

If you’ve deactivated your primary fire suppression system, you’d damn well better have enhanced conventional firefighting systems on hand and extra firefighting crews standing by, in the workspaces along with extensive fire watch observers.

Fire watch, for those unfamiliar with the concept, is a procedure involving one or more observers whose job is to look for sparks, smoke, and fire, and is a requirement whenever fire producing activities occur.  These activities include burning, welding, grinding, and any other activity that can produce sparks, flame, or sufficient heat to initiate a fire.

Common sense would also suggest,

• If you must shut down a firefighting system, do so only in small sections, leaving the remainder active. 
• If you must shut down the entire firefighting system, no ‘hot work’ should be allowed for the duration.
• If you must shut down the entire firefighting system, extensive manpower and firefighting equipment should be on hand and at the immediate location of the work.

Regarding automatic fire suppression systems … they always fail, even when active.  The history of industrial disasters has thoroughly proven this.  Industrial fire suppression systems are every bit as robust and extensive as Navy systems and yet they, too, always fail.

Combustibles - This is why you don’t send ships out fitted with combustible crew comforts.  War ships should always be ready for disaster which means they should always be in a combat-stripped condition with all unnecessary combustibles removed.  The implication of this is that we should not be sending ships on extended cruises that require excessive crew comforts.  War, and the Navy, is a combat business not a military cruise ship operation and there are no days off or safe days, even in port (Cole) or undergoing maintenance.

According to The Drive / The War Zone website,

The area where the fire started, which was the lower vehicle storage area, was filled with cardboard, rags, drywall, and other combustible material. (5)

Drywall?!  On a ship?  There’s an incredibly stupid idea.  A reader suggested that drywall (a common household wall covering also known as sheet rock) was actually something called Tri-Wall.  Regardless, combustible wall coverings have no place on a ship.

Combustibles being stored on a ship?  Especially one in maintenance where a LOT of hot work is occurring?  That’s just stupidly unsafe.

The fire is believed to have started below those spaces, in the lower cargo hold of the ship, known as the “Deep V,” Sobeck said.

It is a “huge open area where you store a lot of (Marine Corps) equipment and everything else,” he said. “That’s where we believe it was started.” (1)

It would seem unlikely that there was any Marine Corps equipment stored there considering that the ship was coming out of a two year maintenance availability.  The area was presumably filled with combustibles associated with the maintenance activities.  Those materials should never have been stored there.  They should have been brought onto the ship the day they were needed and should have been removed from the ship the moment they were not needed.  Sure, that adds extra cost but the several thousand dollars that the Navy saved cost them a $4B ship.

This also illustrates that office and berthing items have no place on a ship beyond the barest of  necessities.

Toxicity – As usual, the Navy’s official communications were less than accurate, to put it politely.

While the precise cause remained unknown Sunday night, Sobeck [Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck, commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 3] said there was “nothing toxic” in the ship, and that the black smoke billowing from the amphib all day was caused by office and berthing items burning. (1)

“It’s an ashy fire; there’s nothing toxic in there,” Sobeck said. (4)

Nothing toxic?  This is a blatant lie.  Of course the smoke is filled with toxic chemicals.  Most items on a ship produce toxic gases when burned.  The ship is being totally consumed and that means that plastics, insulation, composites, paint, solvents, etc. are being burned and all of them produce toxic gases when burned.  As seen in the photos, much of the smoke is thick and black which is not what smoke from an office supplies fire looks like.  Either the Admiral is ignorant beyond belief or he’s just plain lying.  Make no mistake … he’s intentionally lying.  I understand that he’s lying to try to calm people but the way to calm people is to give them accurate, truthful information that they can then act on as appropriate.  Lying just reduces your credibility and leads to blog articles!

This is an emphatic lesson about why you don’t use plastics beyond the barest necessity – they’re toxic when burned.  We need to stop using plastics for crew comforts, deck coverings, wall coverings, and the million other applications.  Yes, plastics are wonderful materials but not on a warship.  The Navy needs to get ready to fight and that means stripping ship.  You veteran old timers know what stripping ship is.  We need to get serious about being ready for combat – or run of the mill disaster.

Note the collapsed mast.

One final question: what if this had been a nuclear ship?

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(1)Navy Times website, “Admiral: Bonhomme Richard fire believed to have started in the ‘Deep V’ cargo hold”, David B. Larter and Geoff Ziezulewicz, 12-Jul-2020,

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2020/07/12/amphibious-assault-ship-ablaze-in-port-san-diego/

(2)USNI News website, “UPDATED: Fire Fight Intensifies on USS Bonhomme Richard, 5 Sailors Still Hospitalized”, Sam LaGrone and Gidget Fuentes, 13-Jul-2020,

https://news.usni.org/2020/07/13/fire-fight-intensifies-on-uss-bonhomme-richard-5-sailors-still-hospitalized

(3)Washington Times website, “Fire suppression system on USS Bonhomme Richard was inoperable, Navy official says”, Julie Watson / Associated Press, 13-Jul-2020,

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jul/13/uss-bonhomme-richard-fire-suppression-system-was-i/

(4)https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/military/story/2020-07-12/blaze-on-board-uss-bonhamme-richard-at-naval-base-san-diego

5)https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/34801/two-decks-are-thought-to-separate-fire-on-uss-bonhomme-richard-from-1m-gallons-of-fuel