This fire was very, very bad..
This story has been updated to include a statement from a Pentagon spokesperson.
Carrier USS
Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) is preparing to leave the Red Sea to undergo repairs at the U.S. Navy base on Crete after a fire last week required several hours of damage control efforts, USNI News has learned.
Ford will travel to Naval Support Activity Souda Bay for more than a week of pierside repairs, a senior U.S. official confirmed to USNI News on Tuesday. The official confirmed a report in a
that said
Ford is returning to Crete.
The March 12 fire, which occurred in the aft laundry facility, resulted in a major damage control response that displaced sailors across the carrier and disrupted operations throughout the ship, the source confirmed to USNI News.
One sailor was medically evacuated from the carrier after being injured in the damage control effort and is in stable condition, while two others were treated for lacerations, another official told USNI News. More than 200 sailors were treated for smoke inhalation and returned to duty, two sources familiar with the fire response told USNI News.
“Ship’s force is inspecting and overhauling affected spaces, and the cause of the fire is under investigation,” a spokesperson for U.S. 5th Fleet told USNI News in a statement. “The ship continues to operate in the Red Sea, accomplishing U.S. Central Command tasking in support of Operation Epic Fury.”
The smoke damage extended to the berthing, requiring the Navy to take 1,000 mattresses off the future USS
John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) in Newport News, Va., over the weekend to send to
Ford, USNI News understands. The Navy has also collected almost 2,000 sweatsuits and other clothing items to distribute to the crew because many sailors are unable to clean their clothes with most of the laundry services out of commission, a source confirmed to USNI News.
“Due to the fire, several berthing spaces and subsequently, more than 100 racks (beds) were lost,” a Pentagon spokesperson told USNI News in a statement. “An immediate plan to acquire replacement cots has already been established. The resiliency and mental grit of our Sailors has enabled USS
Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) to support ongoing operations.”
Initial communications about the fire suggested that
Ford would need depot-level repairs, USNI News understands.
reported some details of the fire on Monday. One source told USNI News that the damage control efforts, like ensuring the fire had not spread, lasted for more than a day – not that the fire lasted for 30 hours, as reported in
The Times.
Ford sailed through the Suez Canal
and has been operating in the Red Sea with escorts USS
Bainbridge (DDG-96), USS
Mahan (DDG-72) and USS
Winston S. Churchill (DDG-81), according to Monday’s
.
As of Tuesday,
Ford has been deployed for 266 days. Should
Ford remain deployed through mid-April, it will break the post-Vietnam War 294-day record for carrier deployments. USS
Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) set that record in 2020. If the carrier stays out until early May, it would rival the 300-day-plus deployments that carriers conducted to the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War.
The USNI News carrier deployment data uses an internal database that does not include certification cruises, training exercises or other qualification underways. The data only includes operational carrier deployments focused on national tasking as a measure of U.S. combat power and does not account for the time sailors are away from home.
USS
Nimitz (CVN-68) was underway for just under a year during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic because of restriction of movement orders and rules around limited port visits meant to reduce the spread of the virus. The carrier was deployed for national tasking for 263 days.
My grandson, "Poopeye", served on Nimitz during the pandemic deployment.
