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Fire May Leave US Nuclear Sub Damaged Beyond Repair
Hugh Pickens writes "AP reports that a fire that swept through a nuclear-powered submarine in dry dock at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard has caused such extensive damage to its forward compartments that the 22-year-old Los Angeles-class attack submarine might have to be scrapped. 'These submarines were designed decades ago. So they're no longer state of the art,' says analyst Loren Thompson. 'If this vessel returns to service, I will be amazed.' The fire broke out while the Miami was on a 20-month stay at the shipyard for an overhaul, and it took firefighters from more than a dozen agencies twelve hours to put out the fire, described as intense, smoky, and a 'hot scary mess.' 'It takes a lot of guts to go into a burning building. But the idea of going into a submarine full of hot toxic smoke — that's real courage,' said U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree after meeting with the shipyard commander. Firefighters isolated the flames so they would not spread to nuclear propulsion spaces at the rear of the submarine. There was nuclear fuel on board the sub, but the reactor has been shut down for two months and was unaffected. Rear Admiral Rick Breckenridge says an investigation has been launched into what caused the fire, but he expects that investigation to take a long time to complete and wouldn't say if human error has been ruled out as a cause of the fire, or if the focus is on mechanical issues."
You almost got it. It's at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (named for Portsmouth, New Hampshire) which is in Kittery, Maine.
Hi there. Ex-submariner here. One reason was that they likely could not close the hatches. Being in one of these extended dry dock periods usually means that they have all sorts of hoses, wires, etc. going through the hatches making them neigh impossible to close without taking a hatchet to them all. Not to mention, if they were doing any sort of work on the sea water piping, which may be plausible since they were in dry dock, then the fire would still be supplied from the lack of piping that is normally there due to the repair.
My first guess of how this fire happened is that someone had done some welding in a compartment and something caught fire. Usually the Navy is pretty good about removing flamables in the area. They even go so far to have a "fire watch" for several hours after the welding was done to ensure that nothing catches fire. it will be interesting to hear what the root cause is.
Another interesting fact about L.A. class submarines, of which the Miami is included. There is only one water tight door interior to the sub, and that is the one that separates the forward part of the ship to the rear (ie engineering which was apparently not affected). Compare that to the submarine that I was on (Sturgeon Class), there were two water right doors for just the forward part of the ship, and two in the engine room. Basically, if you ever have flooding in an LA class sub, you are going down. At least in a Strugeon class, if 3 of the 5 compartments were completely flooded, you could still survive.
Every ship is manned until it is decommissioned. One third of the crew is on board at all times to stand security watches and maintain the ship. For various reasons listed in other comments, just shutting the hatches was unacceptable - even if you had been able to stop the fire that way, the risk of reflash and the damage would be unacceptable. Submariners do not run from fires.