Navy Pushing Additional Safety Checks Following Bonhomme Richard Fire

WASHINGTON: More than a year after the amphibious warship Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) burned for four straight days, the Navy’s investigation remains ongoing. But a senior admiral overseeing surface forces says the service has hired fire marshals and deployed Navy-contractor teams to conduct exercises with local authorities and enforce safety requirements.

“We’re pretty good at firefighting at sea,” Vice Adm. Roy Kitchener, commander of naval surface forces, told reporters on Thursday. But in the context of an industrial shipyard environment, the admiral said there is “a little bit of education” and “spot checking” that is needed.

That spot checking has come in the form of civilian and military personnel being hired as fire marshals to evaluate sailors’ firefighting training and work at the shipyards. “They’re out there ensuring that the waterfront maintenance people, along with the private contractors and the ship’s crew are doing their proper safety inspections,” Kitchener said.

A spokeswoman for Kitchener did not immediately respond to questions about the number of marshals hired or their placements among the shipyards. A spokesman for Naval Sea Systems Command, the Navy’s acquisition agency in charge of procuring and maintaining the surface fleet, also did not immediately respond to questions.

The admiral said the service has made “significant investments” into fire detection systems, although he did not specify the funding or types of systems being installed.

Training changes for officers heading to command have been implemented, Kitchener said, and teams comprised of contractors, representatives from the admiral’s staff and other experts have begun conducting drills with local firefighting authorities.

The Bonhomme Richard caught fire in July 2020. Since then, the service has only said the investigation is ongoing. A year on, the delay in releasing any sort of report to the public or to Congress on what triggered the fire is beginning to attract lawmakers’ attention.

“It’s concerning to me that over a year has passed since the investigation into the fire on the USS Bonhomme Richard — this was a 4-day fire and it destroyed a $4 billion amphibious warship at a time when we can ill afford to lose any of our ships,” Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, said to President Joe Biden’s Navy secretary nominee Carlos Del Toro during his confirmation hearing earlier this month.

Hirono requested, and received, Del Toro’s commitment to update lawmakers on the investigation following his confirmation.

Del Toro has not yet received a committee vote, and with lawmaker’s annual August recess approaching, a final vote confirmation vote on the Senate floor is looking like it could be postponed until September.

As for the ship itself, Navy officials said last year they would have to send Bonhomme Richard to the scrapyard, facing down a $3.2 billion repair bill on top of the $250 million overhaul that it was receiving when the fire broke out in July 2020, Breaking Defense reported.

“I walked sections of the ship 5 levels below and had the opportunity to examine the superstructure,” Chief of Naval Operations Michael Gilday said in a July 2020 email obtained by Breaking Defense at the time. “The island is nearly gutted, as are sections of some of the decks below… nearly encompassing the 844 ft length and 106 ft beam of the ship…. [and] sections of the flight deck are warped/bulging.”