Having spent 3 1/2 years aboard a carrier and gone through 2 yard periods, I have a couple observations. Keep in mind I was a locker slammer and not an academy grad. Every yard bird who does cutting or welding is supposed to have a fire watch with them while they are working. That is a sailor with a fire canister to put out fires immediately. I have seen no mention of that anywhere. I also question why they still had over a million gallons of fuel aboard when the ship is cold iron and will have many fire sources working on the ship. The carrier I was on got 13 1/2 feet per gallon of fuel. I figured it out once and that is something like 500 gallons per mile - when tuned up. Obviously, it didn't need all that fuel to get underway if an emergency arose. And as we know, there weren't enough people on board to get under weigh anyhow.
And why there would still be large quantities of aviation fuel aboard seems troublesome to me. Since squadrons fly aboard, the ship really doesn't need any until under weigh which they could get on an immediate unrep. To me, it seems an unnecessary risk to have all that fuel aboard in a yard period. By the way, the rule of thumb to locker slammers is when the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the ship, the yard period if complete and I was on a 73,000 ton ship.
