NFPA Journal - September/October 2019 - 33

"The way ships are constructed
present huge challenges, the way it
traps heat and affects fire growth," said
Forest Herndon, a 36-year veteran of
the marine firefighting industry who
owns a New Jersey-based company
that teaches land-based firefighters
how to fight fires on ships. "Firefighters could be ascending steep, slippery
ladders or trying to walk on decks that
heat up to the point where their feet
are burning. Shipboard fires burn a lot
hotter than fires in land-based structures, and you don't have the ability to
ventilate these fires, so your methods of
addressing them have to change."
Herndon told me that ambient air
temperatures during ship fires have
been recorded above 1,000 degrees
Fahrenheit. For comparison, a 2016
study published in the journal Fire
Technology characterized ambient
temperatures of 300 to 400 degrees
Fahrenheit as a "severe" thermal environment for firefighters.
Compounding the structural challenges of fighting fires in large marine
vessels are barriers to accessing the
ships in the first place, especially when
they're drydocked, as well as what
materials might be found onboard.

For all ships, drydocking-the process by which ships are lifted out of the
water at a shipyard-is a common way
of housing them during repairs, but it
can present challenges to responders
trying to board. This was clear as I
observed a submarine drydocked for
repairs at the base in Groton. The sub
had been lifted dozens of feet above
the ground and was surrounded almost
entirely by a dense thicket of metal
scaffolding-a clear inhibitor to getting
inside the vessel. "As you can see," Post
told me as I looked at the lifted, mostly
obscured behemoth, "access is a big
challenge, and that delay in getting
water on a fire means a bigger fire."
For cargo ships, in particular, the
materials onboard have been cause
for mounting concerns among safety
experts in recent years. According to
data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD), over the last two decades,
the amount of chemicals transported by
marine vessels worldwide in terms of
ton-miles, or one ton of freight carried
over one mile, has increased by about
88 percent; similarly, the amount of gas
has increased by over 190 percent, and
the amount of oil by about 30 percent.
The rise in US liquified
natural gas (LNG) exports
is a good example. US
exports of LNG hit record
levels in late 2018 in large
part due to a new processing facility that opened on
the Gulf Coast in Corpus
Christi, Texas, according
to the San Antonio Business Journal. "Some other
major [US] ports are now
prepping to have the
capability to export LNG,"
Herndon told me. "That
could potentially create
a specialized fire in a
marine environment that
on its own makes things
more challenging."
In March, the Wall
Street Journal published
an article on a spate of
fires that occurred on
large vessels at sea earlier
this year, which pointed

BEST
"THE
WAY I COULD

DESCRIBE IT
IS FIGHTING
A FIRE IN A
WOOD STOVE
AND CLIMBING
DOWN A
CHIMNEY."

to the ships' contents, as well as their
size, as likely contributors to the severity of the fires. "Ship operators, insurers
,and regulators increasingly are focusing on the chemicals, batteries, and
other goods that can trigger or feed
a fire," the newspaper reported. "The
potential damage from such incidents
has grown as carriers have moved
to ever-larger vessels, concentrating
more containers on a smaller number
of ships. That can raise the chances
that dangerous goods are onboard and
the rush to handle many thousands of
boxes at port call may raise the chances
that poorly packaged dangerous goods
can slip through."
The final factor that makes fighting
fires on large marine vessels difficult
is the bevy of communication responsibilities and challenges that arise
before and during marine firefighting
operations.
Before even getting onto a ship or
inside a submarine, firefighters need
permission from the ship's captain to
board, a practice dictated by centuries-old maritime rules. When it comes
to military ships, that permission may
be delayed out of a desire to ensure
security, while on cargo ships or passenger vessels, it may be delayed simply
out of tradition or pride. "It's a cultural
thing," Post said. "It's the captain's ship.
Under the laws of the sea, we can't just
come onboard and say, 'We're here to
put your fire out.' They actually need to
want our help."
Once onboard, Post explained that
having a solid grasp of maritime terminology and technical knowledge is
essential for firefighters to stay safe
and have the best shot at saving lives
and property. One way this is often
ensured is through establishing a line
of communication with the ship's head
engineer, he said. A key example is
communicating with the engineer to
ensure the amount of water firefighters
plan to put on the fire won't sink the
ship. "We have to be mindful that if
there's water in, there's got to be water
off," Post said. "Otherwise the ship will
do a number of things-listing, hogging, sagging. In a structure fire, 180
gallons a minute is sort of the baseline,
but we want to find that happy medium
N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

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