NYT reports that one of the US aircraft carriers has to withdraw to port due to a laundry room fire. About 600 sailors lost access to their bunks.

The fire, according to two officials, began in the vent of a dryer in the ship’s laundry facilities and quickly spread. Sailors battled the blaze for more than 30 hours, officials and sailors said.

The Navy did not respond to a request for comment. Central Command said in its statement that the fire caused “no damage to the ship’s propulsion plant, and the aircraft carrier remains fully operational.”

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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    2 days ago

    There have also been reports of sailors flushing all sorts of things down toilets to clog them. These guys are doing everything they can to sabotage their ships and get out of there.

    • T156@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      They wouldn’t need to do that much either. The sewerage system was a new vacuum-based system that was supposed to be more efficient, but ended up being very finicky/fragile, and on top of that, was undersized for the demands of the crew, since it was designed around the average usage on a ship, rather than the peak usage.

      So when everyone decides they want to go to the WC and have a shower after a shift, the thing would back up because it couldn’t keep up.

      • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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        23 hours ago

        Well the good thing is they at least have a clear goal to achieve then they can go home… right… I mean it would be a form of hell to serve endlessly in a conflict no one wants running missions that are just as likely warcrimes than not while your likely being told that everyone will be home soon.

        Gee its almost like this was not well planed.

  • Senator Collins@aussie.zone
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    2 days ago

    Well, there are a lot of these ships going around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen. I just don’t want people thinking that U.S. aircraft carriers aren’t safe.

  • perestroika@slrpnk.netOP
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    2 days ago

    Apparently, careless smoking is not a uniquely Eastern European thing. Or perhaps someone decided to frag their ship (just a little bit, not badly).

    From the article:

    The U.S. military’s Central Command said two sailors received treatment for “non-life-threatening injuries.” People on the ship reported that dozens of service members suffered smoke inhalation.

    And in the category of non-life-threatening, but still not ideal, many sailors have not been able to do laundry since the fire.

    The ship, along with its 4,500 sailors and fighter pilots, was in the Mediterranean on Oct. 24 when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered it to steam to the Caribbean to add weight to President Trump’s pressure campaign on Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s leader before his seizure.

    From the Caribbean, the carrier rushed to the Middle East for the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, which is now in its third week.

    Speaking to sailors on board aircraft carriers is difficult in the best of circumstances. During a war, the ships and military bases involved in operations go “dark,” limiting the ability of service members to communicate with the outside world. The officials and sailors interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

    The Ford is now entering its 10th month of deployment. It will break the record for longest post-Vietnam War carrier deployment if it is still at sea in mid-April. That record, at 294 days, was set by the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in 2020.

    Crew members on the Ford have been told that their deployment will probably be extended into May, which would put them at an entire year at sea, twice the length of a normal aircraft carrier deployment.

    • frongt@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      The fire, according to two officials, began in the vent of a dryer in the ship’s laundry facilities

      Nah, dryer vent fires happen all the time in improperly maintained systems. Especially when you have people like college students or junior enlisted using them. Dryer lint is very flammable. Ask any boy scout.

      “Careless smoking” is a cover for an airstrike. This is more akin to the Kuznetsov catching fire. Hopefully there are no cranes around to fall on the Ford.

      • SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip
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        2 days ago

        improperly maintained systems

        On a US Navy warship? The US military which has procedures and protocols for everything just… compromised mission-readiness by overlooking a simple, well-known, but critical maintenance item? I mean, this could possibly be something that the yard staff was tasked with when the ship comes in after a standard six-month deployment, but if they’re overlooking stuff like that, it makes one wonder about the overall preparedness of the Navy.

        • 0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 day ago

          It works like this, before they go to fight, they’re the most invincible, most prepared, most tactical, most notorious, with the most fire power ready to turn countries to glass.

          When they get fucked, its a local scout’s fault, not that serious, happens all the time, nothing suspicious, rookie mistake, maintenance problems, not a big deal, just jets sliding off of ships, smoking mistake, and so on.

          You get the idea. You can almost predict what their “explanation” are going to be. It’ll be anything but accepting that they got their ass handed to them.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          2 days ago

          It’s a meme that the weakness of the Death Star is a tiny overlooked vent for a reason. The big things are carefully considered. The tiny things, like a dryer vent, are often overlooked.

          • SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip
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            2 days ago

            I found online a Navy manual from the '70s which prescribed laundry operations in excruciating detail, running over a hundred pages. It required cleaning the dryer lint traps every 2 hours, and monthly cleaning of the ducts. The Navy even has ratings specifically for laundry workers, Ship’s Serviceman (Laundry).

            It just blows mind that this isn’t a solved problem, since it was solved 50 years ago!

            • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
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              2 days ago

              Right, that’s all good. Now you have to get a couple of low-ranking servicemen to carry out every step of that hundred page manual to the letter on each of their several dozen machines, daily, after they’ve been deployed for an ongoing 10 months because their superiors are morons, and are further scheduled to become the longest running carrier deployment of all time at over a year of deploy time, because their superiors are morons.

              I’d believe that some corners were cut in these servicemen’s duty, and it just happened to be one too many corners one too many times. The men are fatigued, they want to get off the ship. It’s possible these corners were even cut on purpose with exactly this result in mind in an attempt to get them off the ship.

              • T156@lemmy.world
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                22 hours ago

                Right, that’s all good. Now you have to get a couple of low-ranking servicemen to carry out every step of that hundred page manual to the letter on each of their several dozen machines, daily, after they’ve been deployed for an ongoing 10 months because their superiors are morons, and are further scheduled to become the longest running carrier deployment of all time at over a year of deploy time, because their superiors are morons.

                On a ship where the toilets don’t work properly. Little wonder that people are half-arsing it if they’re stuck on a small metal box for months longer than expected, the toilets don’t work properly, and now part of the ship has also caught fire.

              • TehWorld@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                If by “cutting corners” you mean “actively packing dryer lint into a place where it could conceivably be a mistake” I’d agree.

        • frongt@lemmy.zip
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          2 days ago

          That’s the thing about militaries. Like any other organization, it’s all still humans.

        • GalacticGrapefruit@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Sabotage. I guarantee you, this regime will fall to either a military coup, or its own service members sabotaging their equipment in protest before they defect or desert.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      I’d bet on it actually being a dryer fire. The timing though, yeah, it makes me think that maybe it was on purpose. Sure, it happens sometimes. It isn’t that strange. However, that’s what makes it the perfect target for sabotage.

      Most military personnel don’t agree with invading random nations. Most joined to have a decent job that takes them out of a bad situation, and they get college paid for. At most, they joined for the idea of “defending the nation” (which is why the DoD was named that, as propoganda, and why I think the DoW is more honest and better).

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      The fire, according to two officials, began in the vent of a dryer in the ship’s laundry facilities and quickly spread. Sailors battled the blaze for more than 30 hours, officials and sailors said.

      That’s actually pretty likely.

      Sailors will smoke anywhere they can, but in a laundry room it’s gonna be clogged dryer vents.

    • portifornia@piefed.social
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      2 days ago

      Back in the day, I had a roommate in her late 20s, that didn’t even know there was a dryer screen, let alone know to empty it. I spent months wondering why my least-linty clothes were still filling up the screen… My wife spent months wondering why it took 3 cycles to dry her stuff… The landlord spent hours cleaning out the dangerously blocked duct.

      Clean your filters after every use, peeps!

      • village604@adultswim.fan
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        1 day ago

        I’m really glad my dryer vent goes into a vertical chimney, because my wife never cleans out the trap. I stick a boroscope up it every few years to confirm that there’s no buildup, and so far it’s been pristine.

  • Jumi@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I wouldn’t be surprised if the US military is a paper tiger just as Russia. Not to the same extent but I’d bet there’s just as much rot and corruption under the hood.

    • Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      Because they had a dryer catch fire, and despite that, the ship is still combat ready?

      I get that you’re not a fan of the US military, but this is just silly.

      • frongt@lemmy.zip
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        2 days ago

        A single dryer fire would not have raged for hours nor necessitated a return to port.

        • Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          I said that’s where it started, there’s a lot of flammable shit in a laundry. Also, this was likely a commercial dryer, so much bigger than what you have at home.

          • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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            1 day ago

            The ship had to return to port, so it was not “combat effective” hell it was no longer in play. (combat ready is mostly meaningless outside of a mothballed ship).

            This is an embarrassment since it was a larger dryer and clearly not maintained to even your local laundry mat standards. And so far the us military (kinda like the russian one) has had a fair number of “whoopsy daises” in only the last few weeks. The world is watching midair collisions of refueling aircraft, fires on aircraft carriers, key trade routes cut, successful attacks on american assets and no war goals. It would be strange if people where not making the inference to a paper tiger like russia. Clearly not to the level of the russian shitshow it calls an armed force but its very clear the us is not the military power they think they are, likely to do with the record low moral and ongoing issues with corporate corruption in the military industrial complex (where are those new ships for example, the Arleigh Burke is tired boss).

            Sure the us spends the most on the military, but they also forget that those numbers kinda lose their meaning if every contractor is robbing them blind. And this is not unique to the us, its a tale as old as time.

      • TehWorld@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        “Combat Ready” as reported by Pete the Kegstand King, from his freshly laundered, empty suit.

    • _stranger_@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      It isn’t, provided the soldiers give a shit about the mission, which given that the carrier has been at sea doing stunts for trump for twice as long as that crew was supposed to be deployed, they absolutely do not give a shit. I’m 50/50 on coverup vs self sabotage on this one.

    • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      What are the odds it’s self sabotage in an attempt to force the ship to leave.

      • demizerone@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Someone really wanted to go home. I don’t blame them. These ships are no longer practical in drone warfare

    • njm1314@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Story says it’s from March 16th. The post seems to be made either on the 16th or the 17th. Seems pretty not old to me.

        • njm1314@lemmy.world
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          24 hours ago

          Yes? What are you trying to tell me here? That’s a different article. With different information. That’s kind of how news works. Sometimes new articles are written with new information about topics.

          • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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            23 hours ago

            They are thinking about when the shitters backed up. (honestly this might be all due to this ship also being on track for the longest ever deployment in us history).