NFPA Journal - September/October 2019 - 31

Cargo ships dry-docked for maintenance in Norfolk, Virginia. Accessibility
and other issues can make fires and other major incidents involving dry-dock
facilities especially challenging for firefighters and other responders.

thousands of buildings and left nearly
every structure within a one-mile
radius uninhabitable. More than 1,500
people died. In parts of New London,
one mile measured from the middle of
the Thames River stretches across most
of the city's downtown, where thousands of people live, work, and visit.
Compounding Post's concerns over
how close a marine incident would
be to land, property, and people in
the Port of New London is the fact
that, in general, fires on ships are
extremely challenging incidents to
respond to-for many in the fire service, they represent the worst-case
scenario. A 2009 article in Fire Engineering magazine described fires on
large marine vessels as universally
"dreaded" and "feared" within the fire
service. With Post's department-a
specialized force of marine firefighting
experts-located just upriver from the
Port of New London, the area may be
better-protected than most. But experts
including Post worry about what the
situation looks like elsewhere in the

US, and whether fire departments-
especially traditional, non-specialized
departments with a focus on structure
fires-are ready to handle a blaze on a
big boat.
According to Lawrence Russell, an
NFPA staffer who specializes in fires on
marine vessels, that concern prompted
the US Coast Guard to recently ask
NFPA to include new information
related to responding to fires on marine
vessels in the annex section of NFPA
307, Standard for the Construction and
Fire Protection of Marine Terminals,
Piers, and Wharves. The new information will appear in the annex of the
2021 edition of the standard. NFPA
also publishes several other documents
related to marine fires and marine
firefighting, including NFPA 1005, Standard for Professional Qualifications
for Marine Firefighting for Land-Based
Firefighters, and NFPA 1405, Guide
for Land-Based Fire Departments
that Respond to Marine Vessel Fires.
Experts, however, say those documents,
while offering comprehensive guidance

on fighting fires on marine vessels, are
underutilized within the fire service,
and suggest this could be a problem
as the global maritime transportation
industry and the United States' production of warships continue to grow.
"The good news is that there hasn't
been a big fire on a large passenger
or cargo vessel in a US port in a long
time," said Russell. "The bad news is
we're overdue for one. The question
many of my Coast Guard contacts are
asking is, 'Are we ready?'"
BIG SHIPS,
BIG CHALLENGES
For many of the roughly 100 firefighters who responded to the Portsmouth
Naval Shipyard (PNS) in Kittery, Maine,
on the night of May 23, 2012, the blaze
aboard the USS Miami was the worst
fire they'd ever experienced.
"The best way I could describe it is
fighting a fire in a wood stove and
climbing down a chimney," one PNS
firefighter told investigators, according
to a statement from the International
N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

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NFPA Journal - September/October 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - September/October 2019
