Fire, Fire, Fire!

On ships, the biggest fear we have is the fear of fire. It may seem ironic, because we’re floating in a big ocean full of water, but fire, more than flooding, is the biggest casualty that we could face. We practice fire fighting on a routine basis. Even officers go to the fire fighting school—we could even be called on to fight fires, especially on small ships like Frigates.
Yesterday started out as a typical duty day. I was sitting down in the morning and brewing a pot of coffee. As the water started to drip down into the pot, I heard a rapidly ringing bell, followed by the words, “Fire fire fire, class bravo fire in number two SSDG. Away repair lockers away—provide from repairs five and three.” Our SSDG is one of our Ship’s Service Diesel Generators. It’s about 15’x15’ and takes up a whole room. We have four, and they provide all the electricity for our ship. When I heard this word passed, my heart sank. Fires are classified by a letter code—Alpha fires are your everyday fires, with wood or paper burning. Charlie fires are electrical fires. Both are fairly simple to contain most of the time. Bravo fires, however, are fires caused by fuel. For it to be a bravo fire, there had to be a fuel leak that caught on fire, meaning it is much tougher to put out.
Underway, this would be manageable. 200 people on a ship can fight a contained fire pretty easily. In port, about 140 of the 200 people are out on liberty at any given time. This meant that we were seriously undermanned to fight a large fuel fire. The ship has three repair lockers, where we get equipment to fight fires from. We dress into fire fighting gear there, and they serve as satellite vantage points to run the operation. Usually, an ensign is the locker officer, meaning he is in charge of running the locker of about 20 or 25 men. I have some experience in running a locker, but it was limited.
As I ran up the hatches I could tell that there was a fire burning. There was smoke everywhere and people were standing around, not knowing what to do. Thankfully, there was a chief there telling them to go to a repair locker. In a crisis, people fall into two groups. 90% of people freeze or freak out. They either don’t know what to do, or are so rushed with adrenaline that they can’t effectively do things to change the situation. The other 10% get very calm. They take a breath and figure out how to fix the crisis, and then get people to where they need to go. Officers are paid to be in that 10%.
I ran to repair three—I had to go up and around to avoid the smoke. Our main locker, repair five, is where the main fire team would go. It’s best equipped to fight the fire. Unfortunately, it is also right above the location of the fire. I knew we needed to get to another locker and that it would need an officer, so I went there to take control of the locker because I was the only other officer with repair locker experience on board. Some senior enlisted had already begun directing people, and we began having people get dressed out in fire fighting gear and sending investigators to the scene to get a handle on the extent of the damage. In a time of crisis, people take direction from leadership incredibly well. It’s a perfect example of the chain of command actually working. My job was to make sure that the repair efforts were running smoothly, as well as keep people calm, which was the hardest task. Some people were yelling phrases like, “Hurry! This is the real thing! Go, go!” A locker officer’s job is to calm them and direct people in a composed manner to ensure a quiet, quick, fire fighting effort. All of the normal political interactions that we normally have in a given day went out the window in the name of rank and position. It seemed like the chain of command was actually a comfort to people. It made sure that there was a structure to fix the problem.
As we were preparing to investigate the fire, the other repair locker had to evacuate because of the smoke in the area. They joined us to augment our manning. Thankfully, we have an installed firefighting system called Halon. It’s a gas that’s heavier than air, so when it’s discharged in the space, it suffocates the fire. It does the same to humans, though, so we can’t have people in the space after discharging Halon. We evacuated the diesel room and discharged Halon. The system worked like a charm, stopping the fire (except for a couple of hot spots) from spreading.
We spent about an hour and a half making sure that the space was fire-free and safe to enter without respiratory protection. Thankfully, nobody was injured in the incident. It really was a testament to our training and crew that the fire did not get out of control. They performed admirably and were manned and ready to fight the fire in under ten minutes. What started out as an easy duty day turned into the most eventful duty day in my time on board USS Thach. Hopefully, next duty day I can actually sit and sip on my coffee without bells and whistles interrupting my breakfast.