The US Navy Accused Him of Arson. Its Own Investigation Showed Widespread Safety Failures.
After the USS Bonhomme Richard fire, investigators found missing fire hoses, a broken sprinkler system and other systemic failures. The Navy is still accusing a sailor of arson, against the advice of a military judge.
MEGAN ROSE,PROPUBLICA | SEPTEMBER 27, 2022
NAVY PERSONNEL
On the morning of July 12, 2020, the first orange flickers of destruction took hold in the bowels of the hulking USS Bonhomme Richard as it sat moored at a San Diego naval base.
Unimpeded, the fire gathered force, surging upward, conquering one level of the 844-foot ship and then the next, while the crew — the ship’s critical firefighting force — fled to the pier. There, the captain and his sailors stood by as the Bonhomme Richard burned, in cruel irony of its motto “I have not yet begun to fight.”
Not until the San Diego fire department went aboard did anyone spray water on the fire — nearly two hours after it had started. By then it was too late. Gas cylinders were exploding and shooting through the air, and firefighters didn’t have a map or even a sailor to guide them through the smoky maze of the ship. A firefighter’s warning that a compartment was “about to blast” forced firefighters off the Bonhomme Richard just minutes before an explosion so powerful it was heard 13 miles away and hurled debris onto a nearby destroyer.
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2022/09/navy-accused-him-arson-its-own-investigation-showed-widespread-safety-failures/377690/
