Hi everyone; it’s Kevin. Today is Friday, April 8th. In the last decade, two Navy ships were destroyed by fire: in 2012, the nuclear attack submarine USS Miami, docked at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and in 2020, the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard or BHR, docked in San Diego. Following these events, Naval Sea Systems Command identified changes to improve the fire safety posture of the entire Navy. These changes resulted in a new set of instructions to train crews on how to handle fire on ships, particularly in maintenance availabilities.

Here at EB we’re not contractually obligated to follow these new instructions, known as the 8010 standard, but consistent with our core values of acting with integrity and purpose, and always in the spirit of doing the right thing, we conducted a major submarine fire drill last week aboard USS Hartford, which is docked in the Groton shipyard. Supporting this simulation, in addition to our firefighters, were our ECC personnel, RERO responders, Ship’s Management, Ship’s Test personnel, the City of Groton and Sub Base New London personnel, the crew of the USS Hartford, along with over 20 surrounding fire departments and other outside first responders helping us out.

On today’s podcast I’m joined by Electric Boat’s Fire Chief, Jeff Chandler. Jeff joined the company this past November bringing with him over 35 years of experience in fire and emergency services. Before EB, he worked for the state of Connecticut, carrying out a 20-year career with DEEP, the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, where he supervised the hazardous materials emergency response unit.

So Chief, welcome to the podcast and a belated welcome to Electric Boat. Let’s talk about last week’s drill, and why it was important to go through this full-scale simulation.

Thank you sir; it’s definitely a pleasure to be here. When a boat is out at sea the sailors are trained to fight fires very quickly and aggressively because if they don’t, the boat and all lives on board are lost. When they are in port, it is a different story. They have systems that are down because of maintenance. Like right now, the trim system is going to be going down any day now on the Hartford, so their ability to fight fire off of the onboard system is going to be diminished. We have some temporary hose reels that are going to be put into place. But they also have a limited staff on board, which is one of the more contributing factors. That was one of the issues they had on the USS Miami—there was nobody walking the boat during the timeframe the fire was set by the arsonist.

Furthermore, they were looking for the smoke mid-level; it turned out the fire was in the lower level. By the time they got to the fire, the fire was already well advanced. Couple that with a smaller crew, not a plan in place to operate as an integrated team with the Naval shipyard personnel, definitely hampered efforts and is why that fire got out of control so quickly, and ultimately resulted in the loss of that vessel.

Those lessons are what we were trying to practice during our last drill. Working with ship’s force, we had numerous drills directly with the Hartford personnel on how we would advance hose lines from dockside off of our piers down into the boat so that we’re operating from the same sheet of music.

Additionally, we also worked with the command staff to make sure we had the ability to make sure we were communicating using the same language. The Navy has a different set of words for all the same things we have in civilian firefighting; we have to make sure we’re calling an item the same thing.

On the USS Bonhomme Richard, the first spread for nearly two hours unabated before the first firefighters—crews from the San Diego Fire Department—poured water onto the flames. During that availability in that shipyard, 87% of the ship’s detection, firefighting and communications systems were not in operation. Also, the history of training and readiness of ship’s force personnel showed numerous failed drills. They weren’t taking care of cleaning up their own house; that’s in the report from the Navy. Finally, the integration of the Naval Base firefighters and other civilian firefighters, who had never been inside of a ship before, was another contributing factor.

The goal of our drill was to abate all those issues. We worked extensively with everyone involved to ensure we were all on the same page and have the ability to fight a fire onboard. Bringing on mutual aid fire departments is a bit of an issue for us. We have a secured area we have to get them down to with a security plan. We managed to conduct a successful drill during which we ensured we could put continuous water on the fire from the time the first nozzle was opened until we had extinguished the fire. That meant when all available fire fighters on the scene went into the hull, had their turn at staffing the nozzle, and then came back up to be efficiently relieved on site. We did that—we opened up a nozzle and it never had to be shut off again for the entire firefight. That was on two decks, lower level and mid-level, and we had a third nozzle staged on the upper level to ensure there is no fire extension up above. We also searched for lost people on the boat in lights-out conditions.

Take a situation where you have a firefighter in a building fire. If you get lost or disoriented, it can be scary, but oftentimes you can find an exterior wall, open up a window and get yourself out of harms’ way. That is not the case on a submarine. Picture going to a friend’s house, one that you’ve never been to before, turn off all the lights and then walk from one side of the house to the other in pitch black without stumbling, getting lost or confused. That’s basically what we’re asking of our mutual aid fire departments, so we’re trying to work closely with them so they have an understanding of shipboard firefighting.

That’s a great description of what we did. Obviously, we were at it for a couple of hours to make sure we were as thorough with the training as we could be. Let’s talk a little bit about how we did from your perspective—what did we get right and what do we need to do differently?

What we did right was 130 firefighters and emergency response personnel showed up. Eighty-one spent time in the hull, and we managed to successfully put water on the fire continuously. Particularly challenging was managing breathing apparatus—how much “air” time firefighters can spend in hull. We learned from other drills that have taken place around the country, and we brought it in a cascade system and an air compressor system from Mystic and New London fire departments, respectively. At no point in time did we have an issue where a firefighter came out of the hull, dropped off their air cylinder, got fluids and food replaced, where they were waiting for a cylinder. We had a continuous flow of air cylinders so people could immediately go back to work if we needed them to do so.

It’s pretty interesting to watch because you realize even though it’s a drill scenario, you’re still asking people to don their full firefighting ensemble with breathing air, get down a submarine hatch, find the fire, fight it for a period of time and then exit before they run out of air. In all cases, we had people on station actually fighting the fire for only about 10 minutes at a time. This is a pretty manpower-intensive effort to fight a submarine-based fire, isn’t it?

Yes, it is. The 10 minutes on station is simply because you have cylinders varying from one hour to 30 minutes depending on the style the mutual aid fire department wears. You have to take that under consideration when you have firefighters acting as an integrated team. You have to take the smallest cylinder into account and make sure everyone gets in, fights the fire and gets out of the hatch without running out of the air.

And under stressful conditions too—imagine if there was a real fire—that would increase the breathing rate of anyone put into that situation. That’s a critical piece, important to fighting a fire onboard a submarine. Let’s talk about the other major component. We stood up our Emergency Control Center for the drill, and that was a first. Normally we’re doing radiological-control events. Tell me what we took away from that.

We integrated with the ECC and also the RERO On Scene Incident Command to make sure we were operating in a safe atmosphere and there was no simulated radiation escaping from the boat. It went very well. We have some lessons learned that we have to work on as far as getting information from the scene up to the ECC. But, all in all, we had a very good working relationship. We staffed up a new position for the ECC. We now have an Emergency Services Manager that is a direct link for both fire and security having a seat at the ECC. This is also going to enhance our ability to communicate.

Thanks for that Chief. I appreciate the rundown. I got to walk around as an Observer for this drill. I saw the on-scene command aspects of this as well as the ECC command. What struck me was the importance of the communication between the ECC, where we normally have the center of gravity for the drills we do. That shifted a bit more toward the scene. That communication and some of the lessons we learned just underscored how difficult these causalities are to fight and how coordinated we really need to be. That’s why we practice them after all.

You mentioned a first. We’ve had numerous firsts: the first time a private shipyard performed this drill as opposed to the naval shipyards that have done similar drills. It’s the first time we integrated the ECC. The sub base did a drill this past November, and they did not stand up the ECC. They concentrated on firefighting efforts; we wanted to expand on the firefighting efforts as well as the large incident we would have to manage, meaning the radiological aspects as well.

This was the first drill of its kind in our history, and I’m pleased with our response. This certainly wasn’t the ultimate in terms of our preparedness for fire. I think we’re going to continue to prepare and be ready in the event we have a fire situation. Each employee who works onboard a submarine has a role to play in making sure extinguishing agent gets put on that fire as quickly as we can, recognizing that any one of our employees should not put themselves in harms’ way to fight anything significant. Leave it to the professionals to do that. But I’m overall pleased with the response. It put a light on areas we can always focus on to improve. Overall, our ability to bring people in from all over the area, our mutual aid fire companies in particular, while continuously fighting this fire inside the boat, was an objective that was well achieved. I know a lot of work went into this drill with many steps along the way, including a tabletop and a full-blown drill.  Thank you to you, your team and everyone involved who prepared us to be successful in fighting a major fire.

Before I close out today’s podcast, I want to remind everyone that this Sunday, April 10th, is the day each year we pause to remember the loss of the USS Thresher and the 129 crew and civilian riders on board. I encourage you to read the story on this tragedy written by Steve Kirkup in our Quality organization; in it Steve describes what happened and the lessons learned that continue to drive our priorities every day at Electric Boat: safety, quality, schedule, cost, and continuous improvement, in that order. 

Every one of us has a responsibility to keep our sailors top of mind—that is our higher purpose. Please take a moment to remember the sacrifices made by those aboard Thresher and keep that memory alive as you create submarines for the sailors who will call them home for decades to come.

Thanks everyone; we’ll talk again soon.

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