I swear, as long as I live, I’ll never quite understand
people and what makes them do astoundingly stupid things.
As you may have already known, back on May 23d of this year
there was a fire aboard a US Navy attack submarine, USS Miami (SSN-755) as she
was in drydock at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. The Los
Angeles-class sub was at the yard to undergo a scheduled 20-month overhaul and
upgrade. The fire broke out in the forward area of the sub, damaging the
torpedo room and control room. The fire took over 12 hours to extinguish
through the exhaustive efforts of firefighters from several departments, and at
least seven firefighters were injured fighting the blaze.
The ship sustained over $400 million in damages. At the
time she was built she cost roughly $900 million. The Navy actually considered
scrapping the ship instead of repairing it. And to add insult to injury, there
was a second, much smaller fire that ignited on the drydock cradle the ship is
resting on that occurred on June 16th but caused no additional
damage.
Images of the original fire being fought
The plot thickened. It turned out that the fires were
intentionally set by a shipyard worker in the midst of an anxiety attack who
wanted to get out of work early. I kid you not.
Seriously. Digest that morsel a minute. A shipyard worker
being treated for anxiety and depression, taking at least 4 different
medications, who wanted out of work, sets fire to a nuclear-powered warship of
the United States Navy not once, but twice. Casey James Fury, 24, of Portsmouth, N.H., faces up to life
in prison if convicted of two counts of arson in the fires.
I wanted to go home...
Fury said he
initially lied about setting the fires "because he was scared and because
everything was blurry to him and his memory was impacted due to his anxiety and
the medication he was taking at the time".
Seriously.
Now, I’m sure by now
a good many of you are just a tad pissed off. But wait, there’s more.
I have a bit of an
inside connection to this whole fracas. The drydock where USS Miami has been being
worked on for the previous couple months before the fires was pretty much my
old backyard. By that, I mean that my old house was about a quarter mile away
from the drydock. I lived in Kittery, Maine from October 1983 to January of
1988. For part of that time I lived across the street from the base entrance,
but for my final couple years I lived on the base itself, on the back side by
the river, a little ways off from the drydocks. I used to have 3 to 5 ships at
a time with live nuclear reactors in close proximity to my front door. I’m
frankly blown away that something like this could happen.
Aerial view of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard
Furthermore, one of my friends from high school, who is a Lieutenant with the Newington, NH Fire Department, was one of the dozens of firefighters called to the scene. In his typically dry fashion, Tommy McQuade said, “So item #5439 on the bucket list, "Fight fire on a nuclear submarine" can be checked off now.”.
Another firefighter, Eric "Boats" Hardy of the Shipyard's own fire department, also a schoolmate of mine and a Navy veteran himself, was one of the injured. Eric hurt his back & shoulder grabbing a fellow firefighter who lost his grip in the escape trunk ladder well and was free-falling to the floor 3 decks below. Eric's quick grab saved his partner and he was able to hold him until the other firefighter was able to grab hold on his own.
Eric "Boats" Hardy
The more I think
about this the angrier I get. Half a billion dollars in damages. A potential
nuclear episode averted. Dozens of people endangered and seven injured. All
because a dude went a bit nutso for a few minutes and wanted to go home.
And folks wonder why
my faith in humanity is quite often shaky at best.
Cannot. Express. Anger...
ReplyDeleteI just want to shove this ass into the reactor!