A fire last month aboard a U.S. nuclear submarine that caused more than $400 million in damage may have been caused by a vacuum cleaner…
“Preliminary findings indicate the fire started in a vacuum cleaner used to clean work sites at end of shift, and stored in an unoccupied space,” the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Congressional and Public Affairs Office said in a news release. “Specific details as to the cause and subsequent damage assessment are still being evaluated…”
The May 24 incident affected the forward compartment of the USS Miami, where the crew’s living quarters, command and control spaces and the torpedo room are…
“Miami’s nuclear propulsion spaces were not affected by the fire,” the release said. “The ship’s nuclear propulsion plant was not operating at the time and the plant had been shut down for over two months. Nuclear propulsion spaces were isolated from the forward compartment fire early and spaces remained habitable, manned and in a safe and stable condition throughout the entire event. There were no torpedoes or other weapons onboard the submarine.”
Cleanup in the forward compartment began last week and the Navy estimated an “initial rough repair cost” of $400 million, plus some 10% for what it called “secondary effects,” including disruption to other planned work in the shipyards and the possible need to contract work to the private sector.
Your tax dollars at work.
This is why I have hard wood floors
Wow. I bet that sucked.
“Hey, Jose! You didn’t check in your vacuum cleaner.”
“Doh! I’ll get it in the morning.”
As a new seaman apprentice in the Electrical Shop on a Naval destroyer, it was my job to check all “portable equipment” (vacuum cleaners, toasters, clock radios, etc.) for “insulation resistance” (shorts, ground faults, etc. ) once each WEEK.
If I found one that was bad (or, not in my log book) I would confiscate it and throw it in the ocean. Lots of power for a 19 year old kid.
Holy Crap! Another Sparky!
I had that job, too.
People don’t understand that steel bulkheads don’t give when you run into them. The tool does.
I knew a couple of Marines that might defy that statement.
Awful as the outcome is, would it have mattered if the fire had started from a short in some $100,000 piece of equipment?
Nope, shit happens.
Dallas, yes, I completely agree. We should put wood floors in all the submarines instead of sound muffling carpets, so it will play havoc on opposing sonars, scratching their heads where is the sound of boots coming from…
In my submarine the sailors wear fuzzy bunny slippers.
Yes, that’s helpful when a pipe or torpedo falls on their toes…
They’re steel-toed fuzzy bunny slippers.
Where can I get a pair for work?
Kinda like these?
http://webarchive.teslamotors.com/display_data/bunnyslippers.jpeg
thank you! Some people have no common sense.
Submariners wear sneakers. I wore Mr. Rogers style tennis shoes. The idea is sneakers are quieter and footsteps from normal military shoes could be heard by the enemy.
sounds pretty gay,
What the hell catches fire inside a nuclear submarine, and why wouldn’t there be a fireproof interior, and why was there no automatic fire suppression equipment installed?
This “fire” stinks.
Lots of stuff. You would be surprised. The insulation around all electrical equipment is rubber and cotton.
Had a fire on my ship (two actually) and it’s very interesting what will burn when given enough incentive.
Paint, hydraulic fluid, grease, bedding, Oxygen tanks, any or all of these could have contributed to the fire.
What type of automatic suppression system would you recommend? Do you really want to be in a tube x 100 feet down and have it go off?
DuPont FM-200
It can extinguish the fire in 10 seconds, and the gas discharged is suitable for breathing
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ImUIKDQL6Wk
Funny, they still issued leather dress shoes at Marine boot camp as recently as a decade ago because the corfam shoes are not flame resistant when deployed on ship. Everybody threw them out almost immediately so they finally gave up.
Diesel fuel for the diesel engine, foodstuff in cardboard containers, just to name a few things. Cloth napkins, Kim-wipes, wood paneling, the wood wardroom table, the crew’s uniforms, bedding, the toilet paper in the head. All that stuff can burn.
Also the torpedoes have some fun fuel that produces oxygen as it burns. You really don’t want to think about that stuff catching on fire.
I spent a great deal of time in training and doing drills to fight fires on board submarines. Any odd smell, hot spot, spill, or fire hazard gets reported and investigated immediately. Once the water level of the steam table in the galley got low causing a burning smell, and the whole crew got woken up and dressed in fire fighting gear until they decided it wasn’t dangerous. We were careful.
However, our fire prevention was good enough to insure that I never faced a shipboard fire. I understand that they suck.
Really… sounds rather fishy to me!
But, how would suppress a very large LOUD fart on a sub? LOL!
We already know all about $400 million dollar vacuum cleaners, and 50 million dollar toilet seats and 200 million dollar hammers, etc…. so what?
I’ve got a Kirby vacuum cleaner that I will sell you for $400 million.
Tell you what. I’ll throw in a toilet seat and a hammer for free.
When they caught fire, they had a sinking feeling it was probably that sucky old Hoover.
They built a Nuclear Submarine that couldn’t get an UL aproval rating???
When I was in the army ( 40 years ago) little accidents like this were called (battle field losses). The army encouraged BFL’s, the more money they can spend the more they like it.
Dan
http://www.survivingsurvivalism.com
Probably due to the accomodations for women sailors.
But… will it blend?
what was that woman doing out of the kitchen and on a nuclear submarine anyway?
Real question, or two:
1. Isn’t the point of a three prong plug to “ground” the appliance so that if there is a short it doesn’t cause a fire? Hmmm, ok, I’m thinking maybe the 3 prong is so hoomans don’t get an electric shock, they just get fire and flames? — So what “really” does that third prong do?
2. Do subs/ships have 3 prong appliances? And if so, where is the eventual ground?
1. It’s to prevent humans for getting shocked. Assume a frayed wire inside a piece of equipment touched the case. The ground wire is supposed to direct any current away from you to ground. Notice that pieces of equipment like plastic electric leaf blowers do not have three prongs. They depend upon the case to protect you.
2. The hull is the ground but that may change in port and some ships have ungrounded systems.
3. An exercise for the reader: what about airplanes?
Eh, file this one under “shit happens”.
How much good seamen did it take to douse the fire?
P.S.
It wasn’t a short in the vacuum. Something burning was sucked in it. Another reason not to smoke?
There was a great documentary about life on a sub a few months ago. The crews spend a lot of training time on fire suppression, a major hazard on modern boats like the Miami.
A lot of time training on fire suppression????? Five seconds to say don’t vacuum shit if its on fire would have saved nearly half a billion dollars. And for those who keep asking what burns on a submarine, the sound muffling paint that is all over a sub burns at a certain point as it usually contains cotton or polyester fibers. Once the fire reaches that temperature, every surface in the sub goes up.
Easy to imagine something “smoldering” and not obviously on fire could be vacuumed in and once in the vacuum it would have increased oxygen/air flow and light up like a Banshee.
Now–what would happen in a sub that would leave something “smoldering?”
The obvious is cigarettes. Now, I don’t know but I assume these have been illegal on subs from day one, or is that too rational? “The Smoking Lamp is Lit”
Fire was in the forward compartment. When I was a submariner, smoking was only allowed in one place in the engine compartment. Probably not a cigarette then.
I actually read the article and the ship appeared to be in for a refit in dry-dock, so it could have been something from an acetylene torch or other equipment.
There’s an article? Ha, ha. I missed it. My smoking lamp is lit right now or I’d go back and read that article for whatever missed into it would contain – – although I trust you totally to have scoured it for the key point.
Benji??? – – Submariner?==RESPECT.
I don’t think I would do well with all that compressed humanity, the pings, …. THE PINGS …. the horror.
Crap. This only means I’ll have to double down on you. or not. Every day we wake up, we make choices …. as to who we are.
Not often recognized …. but there it is.
Personally, I welcome our underwater Overlords.
Due to the extreme dangers from smoke inside a sealed vessel like a submarine I would have thought that very little would have burned and that any fires not deliberately started could have been quickly and easily suppressed.
Other than items like food, bedding, clothing, and cleaning agents, I’m not aware of a reason for more than a tiny fraction of the material used in this ship to be flammable.
At worst they should have been able to seal a compartment and flood it with nitrogen which had been stored under pressure and thus would have been very cold when released into the space while venting the chamber to remove O2.
I’m not seeing 200 million in damage to a properly designed ship. If the electronics burned or even came in contact with the smoke in such a way as to require more than wiping off with a damp rag they were definitely using the wrong materials and wrong construction methods.
Maybe something else happened to cause $400 million in damages, and this vacuum cleaner story is the cover story.
That must have been like 3 toilets and a hammer.
3 toilets a hammer, and a vacuum cleaner.
and yeah sure the power plant was never in harms way… uh huh… suuuurrre we’ll believe that.
That sucks.
From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Miami_%28SSN-755%29
An inflammable submarine?
It is also flammable as well.
Irregardless of what he said.
These fires are usually caused by private contractors being careless. Like dropping lit cigs into spaces, or setting fire to insulation with welding torches. But naturally the Navy always covers for them. Because their contractors are sacred cow. So they blame a vacuum cleaner. Not explaining how that’s even possible. Did it overheat? Was the dirt and fuzzy never cleaned out, and that caught fire? Were there no smoke detectors working, to pick up on this thing, before it spread? I assume it was a shop vac, and not a hand held dust buster or dirt devil. Still, even those should have set off some alarm, before the fire spread from them. This is why I’m not buying the story. Sounds like a cover up. And contractor accidents are what they mostly cover up for.
Too bad the VC couldn’t blow too !!!
I’m sure the 400 Million was just for the estimate !!! The actual repair would be a cost plus with no limit on “overruns”, as per usual Pentagon FLEECING OF AMERICA !!!