For a third day, the USS Bonhomme Richard continues to burn at the dock, despite the best efforts of hundreds of Navy and civilian firefighters to quench the inferno. The casualty raises the question, are dockside fires on ships worse than fires at sea? 

“As counter-intuitive as this sounds, I would much rather fight a fire at sea with a whole crew than fight it dockside,” said Bryan McGrath, a retired Navy commander told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “The ability to act quickly with a massive response and inhibit the spread is aided when you have all your people.”

When the fire broke out on the Bonhomme Richard on Sunday, there were approximately 160 of the normal complement of around 1,000 crew.

While it is not known how the fire started, Craig Hooper writing in Forbes, suggests that lax fire safety practices while performing dockside maintenance may be to blame. He notes that the Navy had ample warning of the problem.  He writes: 

 The fire on the USS Bonhomme Richard broke out—in an ironic note—just across the pier from the USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62), freshly back from a multi-year refit after a fatal 2017 collision at sea. During that ship’s multi-year refit, the USS Fitzgerald’s captain grew so concerned about fire safety practices that he wrote a promptly leaked memo for the record noting more than 15 separate fire safety incidents in the yard, including “poorly staffed fire watches, a smoldering deck, combustible material catching on fire, the discovery of previously unreported burnt-cable spot fires and fires that melted equipment.”

While much of the Navy focuses on lethality and in surviving the battlefield, it will be interesting to see if the skipper of the USS Bonhomme Richard—itself fresh from a $250 million refit to operate next-generation F-35B fighter jets—took a similar interest in securing his ship while under maintenance.

If the Bonhomme Richard is a constructive total loss it will be one of the largest ships lost in US Navy history.  The Bonhomme Richard is 844 feet long and weighs about 40,000 tons. The carrier Lexington, sunk during the World War II battle of the Coral Sea, was 888 feet and 47,000 tons.

Perhaps the largest ship controlled by the Navy to be lost to fire was the luxury passenger liner, SS Normandie, At more than 1,000 feet long and 68,000 displacement tons, she was considerably larger than either the Bonhomme Richard or the Lexington.

Renamed the USS Lafayette, the luxury liner was being converted to a troopship in February 1942 at Pier 88 on the Hudson River in New York City. A welder accidentally set a stack of life preservers on fire. The ship’s firefighting system had been disabled and the fire spread rapidly. To fight the fire, firefighters onshore and in fireboats poured water on the blaze, until they pumped so much water aboard that the ship lost stability and rolled over on her port side. She was a total loss and was ultimately sold for scrap.  

Coincidentally, while there was no welding believed to be going on when the fire on the Bonhomme Richard broke out, her Halon firefighting system had been disabled prior to the fire starting. Also due to all the water being pumped aboard to fight the fire, the ship has developed a list. Sailors aboard are working to “dewater” the ship, avoid a repeat of Normandie-like capsize.

Thanks to Walter Scott for contributing to this post.