Shipyard fire safety putting ships at risk

The Navy announced today that the USS Oscar Austin will be out of commission until 2022-2023. She was in the BAE yard in Norfolk undergoing upgrades when a fire broke out in November of last year. Over thirty compartments, including electronics for the ships SPY-1 radar were damaged.

Now the current commander of the USS Fitzgerald, undergoing repairs in Mississippi says a similar incident could easily happen there. There have been 18 fire incidents on board since the Fitzgerald arrived for repairs after colliding with the ACX Crystal off Japan. The most recent incident occurred when workers expanded their hot work into a compartment with no fire watch.

Huntington Ingalls says safety is their first priority, but these things happen in this type of environment. They point out that 23,000 hot work items have been completed in 18 months.

news.usni.org...

a reply to: Zaphod58

What are “hot work items”?

Why is the NAVY not taking extra precautions to ensure that such accidents don’t occur?
Seems like an extreme lack of oversight has been occurring as of late.....as in since my birth.

a reply to: Allaroundyou

What are “hot work items”?

Probably welding, cutting and grinding.

a reply to: MerkabaTribeEntity

a reply to: Allaroundyou

Yep. It's usually welding, but pretty much anything that can throw sparks.

As for the Navy not taking care of this, once it's in yard hands they reduce to a skeleton crew who has their own work to do. They have Navy inspectors, and oversight, but once the yard has her, they're responsible for fire watch when working.

a reply to: Zaphod58

With a fire watch and hot work permit required by OSHA.

Hot work is considered any spark, so somebody with a grinder has to have a firewatch. This is commonly ignored in shipyards. If you are welding on a bulkhead on a ship, you need two firewatches one for the side you are working on and also in the adjacent space. Every shipyard in country knows this, Navy knows this and are even more strict than OSHA regulations regarding hot work permits. It is the companys responsibility to train their employees, and the employees responsibility to follow. Navy needs to start holding these companys more accountable and demand more training.
I was firewatch for a guy that was tack welding and it got too smokey and we needed more ventilation. I signaled for him to stop, and the guy kept going. We got better ventilation and things were fine, but near misses like that happen all the time.

a reply to: Jdubious

It seems like one of the problems they keep seeing is they plan to do hot work in one compartment and then without telling anyone they move into the next, and don't always set the fire watch after they move.

Most of the yardbirds I ever interacted with seemed to be more interested in playing cards than accomplishing any actual work.
Not setting a fire watch is inexcusable.