Fire on the U.S. Aircraft Carrier Gerald R. Ford Raged for Hours, Sailors Say
(www.nytimes.com)
from perestroika@slrpnk.net to world@lemmy.world on 17 Mar 19:10
https://slrpnk.net/post/35435920
from perestroika@slrpnk.net to world@lemmy.world on 17 Mar 19:10
https://slrpnk.net/post/35435920
NYT reports that one of the US aircraft carriers has to withdraw to port due to a laundry room fire. About 600 sailors lost access to their bunks.
The fire, according to two officials, began in the vent of a dryer in the ship’s laundry facilities and quickly spread. Sailors battled the blaze for more than 30 hours, officials and sailors said.
The Navy did not respond to a request for comment. Central Command said in its statement that the fire caused “no damage to the ship’s propulsion plant, and the aircraft carrier remains fully operational.”
#world
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Apparently, careless smoking is not a uniquely Eastern European thing. Or perhaps someone decided to frag their ship (just a little bit, not badly).
From the article:
Nah, dryer vent fires happen all the time in improperly maintained systems. Especially when you have people like college students or junior enlisted using them. Dryer lint is very flammable. Ask any boy scout.
“Careless smoking” is a cover for an airstrike. This is more akin to the Kuznetsov catching fire. Hopefully there are no cranes around to fall on the Ford.
I imagine this would be a large, commercial style dryer too, not a domestic one.
On a US Navy warship? The US military which has procedures and protocols for everything just… compromised mission-readiness by overlooking a simple, well-known, but critical maintenance item? I mean, this could possibly be something that the yard staff was tasked with when the ship comes in after a standard six-month deployment, but if they’re overlooking stuff like that, it makes one wonder about the overall preparedness of the Navy.
That’s the thing about militaries. Like any other organization, it’s all still humans.
You can bet they won’t now.
It’s a meme that the weakness of the Death Star is a tiny overlooked vent for a reason. The big things are carefully considered. The tiny things, like a dryer vent, are often overlooked.
I found online a Navy manual from the ‘70s which prescribed laundry operations in excruciating detail, running over a hundred pages. It required cleaning the dryer lint traps every 2 hours, and monthly cleaning of the ducts. The Navy even has ratings specifically for laundry workers, Ship’s Serviceman (Laundry).
It just blows mind that this isn’t a solved problem, since it was solved 50 years ago!
Right, that’s all good. Now you have to get a couple of low-ranking servicemen to carry out every step of that hundred page manual to the letter on each of their several dozen machines, daily, after they’ve been deployed for an ongoing 10 months because their superiors are morons, and are further scheduled to become the longest running carrier deployment of all time at over a year of deploy time, because their superiors are morons.
I’d believe that some corners were cut in these servicemen’s duty, and it just happened to be one too many corners one too many times. The men are fatigued, they want to get off the ship. It’s possible these corners were even cut on purpose with exactly this result in mind in an attempt to get them off the ship.
If by “cutting corners” you mean “actively packing dryer lint into a place where it could conceivably be a mistake” I’d agree.
That doesn’t mean the procedure was actually followed though.
It works like this, before they go to fight, they’re the most invincible, most prepared, most tactical, most notorious, with the most fire power ready to turn countries to glass.
When they get fucked, its a local scout’s fault, not that serious, happens all the time, nothing suspicious, rookie mistake, maintenance problems, not a big deal, just jets sliding off of ships, smoking mistake, and so on.
You get the idea. You can almost predict what their “explanation” are going to be. It’ll be anything but accepting that they got their ass handed to them.
Sabotage. I guarantee you, this regime will fall to either a military coup, or its own service members sabotaging their equipment in protest before they defect or desert.
That’s actually pretty likely.
Sailors will smoke anywhere they can, but in a laundry room it’s gonna be clogged dryer vents.
I’d bet on it actually being a dryer fire. The timing though, yeah, it makes me think that maybe it was on purpose. Sure, it happens sometimes. It isn’t that strange. However, that’s what makes it the perfect target for sabotage.
Most military personnel don’t agree with invading random nations. Most joined to have a decent job that takes them out of a bad situation, and they get college paid for. At most, they joined for the idea of “defending the nation” (which is why the DoD was named that, as propoganda, and why I think the DoW is more honest and better).
So, an Iranian drone probably hit it. But they’re of course never admitting that
it can’t always be friendly fire, so this time it is a dryer fire.
What are the odds it’s self sabotage in an attempt to force the ship to leave.
Someone really wanted to go home. I don’t blame them. These ships are no longer practical in drone warfare
I wouldn’t be surprised if the US military is a paper tiger just as Russia. Not to the same extent but I’d bet there’s just as much rot and corruption under the hood.
Because they had a dryer catch fire, and despite that, the ship is still combat ready?
I get that you’re not a fan of the US military, but this is just silly.
“Combat Ready” as reported by Pete the Kegstand King, from his freshly laundered, empty suit.
A single dryer fire would not have raged for hours nor necessitated a return to port.
I said that’s where it started, there’s a lot of flammable shit in a laundry. Also, this was likely a commercial dryer, so much bigger than what you have at home.
It isn’t, provided the soldiers give a shit about the mission, which given that the carrier has been at sea doing stunts for trump for twice as long as that crew was supposed to be deployed, they absolutely do not give a shit. I’m 50/50 on coverup vs self sabotage on this one.
Go check your dryer vents, people
Great advice, cleaned mine out this past weekend.
Back in the day, I had a roommate in her late 20s, that didn’t even know there was a dryer screen, let alone know to empty it. I spent months wondering why my least-linty clothes were still filling up the screen… My wife spent months wondering why it took 3 cycles to dry her stuff… The landlord spent hours cleaning out the dangerously blocked duct.
Clean your filters after every use, peeps!
I’m really glad my dryer vent goes into a vertical chimney, because my wife never cleans out the trap. I stick a boroscope up it every few years to confirm that there’s no buildup, and so far it’s been pristine.
Well, there are a lot of these ships going around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen. I just don’t want people thinking that U.S. aircraft carriers aren’t safe.
Was this U.S. aircraft carrier safe?
Well, I was thinking more about the other ones.
The ones that are safe?
Yeah, the ones the vent doesn’t catch fire
THere’s nothing out there… there’s just sailors, and dirty laundry, and no bedding… and a fire.
Nice #TheFrontFellOff homage
Well, are there any design constraints? What are they?
Well, non-flammable vents for one thing
Or maintaining vent filter cleaning schedules.
This happens in homes as well. I knew a family who lived in a semi-remote Ontario area whose 2 yr old house burned to the ground because someone put a load into the dryer, then left for work. By the time the volunteer fire dept got there it was too late.
I just noticed your display name. Nice.
The whole profile, even!
<img alt="image" src="https://quokk.au/static/media/posts/B2/p0/B2p0sy9HkFmzD1c.png">
Well, now that you point that out, I notice that most of their comments are playing on the theme. lol. Must surely be a multi, or maybe they just don’t say much, but that is crazy. And fun. :)
It’s a great pleasure. Thank you.
I’ll call you a cab, shall I?
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/e785fa54-4fa7-4ece-9376-9bdbda05ef83.gif">
About as good as one expects out of a Ford.
This is hilarious for the way it makes clear that he was never helping her whatsoever, lmao. He entirely vanishes in his way, the lass barely moves. Seems like a metaphor or something, idk.
Well, some of them are built so that the ship’s main laundry area doesn’t catch fire at all.
At least the front didn’t fall off.
Again? Isnt this old news
Story says it’s from March 16th. The post seems to be made either on the 16th or the 17th. Seems pretty not old to me.
There have also been reports of sailors flushing all sorts of things down toilets to clog them. These guys are doing everything they can to sabotage their ships and get out of there.
They have been on the boat for 260 some odd days.
They tie the post vietnam record on april 15.
news.usni.org/…/carrier-fords-extension-to-the-mi…
archive.ph/2f6nO
Archive link
Hmmm…