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"When it comes to fire safety on ship, the safest scenario is for every sailor to have flame-resistant clothing.
This was the unsurprising conclusion from a fleet working group tasked with evaluating organizational clothing and flame-resistant requirements at sea.
What is surprising is that A) Sailors required to wear FR coveralls don’t have enough; and B) One of the group’s possible solutions is for sailors to share their coveralls."
.....
"In the fleet, sailors have had to make do, in some cases buying their own fire protection. A pair of FR coveralls costs about $72.60.
“We try, but there just isn’t the money out there to make it practical to issue fire-retardant coveralls in quantities that make it viable for our sailors to wear them every day as they probably should,” said Master Chief Machinist’s Mate (SW) Ron Castle, a nearly 30-year veteran who has been the engineering leading master chief petty officer, or “top snipe,” on a number of steam-powered ships.
“Most senior enlisted that I know, including myself, go out and buy our own FR coveralls for daily wear,” he said. “Even some junior sailors do this.” "
.....
"Over the past 30 years, he said, there’s been 45 significant events that resulted in significant fires. Thirty-one of those events occurred while at sea, the remaining 14 in port.
Analyzing those events, the biggest threats are: blasts from explosions, smoke, electric arc flash and flame.
“Those are the four hazards we looked at, along with what kind of fire protection would fire-retardant clothing provide in those scenarios,” Berkey said. “It’s pretty intuitive that [FR clothing is] not going to protect you from a blast and not going to protect you from smoke, so arc flash and flame is where we concentrated our efforts. Arc flash —you’re not going to get to that unless there’s significant electrical or electronic component that’s involved in the event. So we really concentrated most on the flame aspect of the hazard and what’s the protection from fire-retardant clothing needed to protect from that.”
According to the Navy source, officials found that existing FR coveralls provide the protection needed for shipboard threats.
In 1996, the Navy rescinded the shipboard flame-resistant requirements and took on a level of fire risk for sailors at sea.
It remains to be seen to what extent leaders will decide to mitigate that ongoing risk."
"When it comes to fire safety on ship, the safest scenario is for every sailor to have flame-resistant clothing.
This was the unsurprising conclusion from a fleet working group tasked with evaluating organizational clothing and flame-resistant requirements at sea.
What is surprising is that A) Sailors required to wear FR coveralls don’t have enough; and B) One of the group’s possible solutions is for sailors to share their coveralls."
.....
"In the fleet, sailors have had to make do, in some cases buying their own fire protection. A pair of FR coveralls costs about $72.60.
“We try, but there just isn’t the money out there to make it practical to issue fire-retardant coveralls in quantities that make it viable for our sailors to wear them every day as they probably should,” said Master Chief Machinist’s Mate (SW) Ron Castle, a nearly 30-year veteran who has been the engineering leading master chief petty officer, or “top snipe,” on a number of steam-powered ships.
“Most senior enlisted that I know, including myself, go out and buy our own FR coveralls for daily wear,” he said. “Even some junior sailors do this.” "
.....
"Over the past 30 years, he said, there’s been 45 significant events that resulted in significant fires. Thirty-one of those events occurred while at sea, the remaining 14 in port.
Analyzing those events, the biggest threats are: blasts from explosions, smoke, electric arc flash and flame.
“Those are the four hazards we looked at, along with what kind of fire protection would fire-retardant clothing provide in those scenarios,” Berkey said. “It’s pretty intuitive that [FR clothing is] not going to protect you from a blast and not going to protect you from smoke, so arc flash and flame is where we concentrated our efforts. Arc flash —you’re not going to get to that unless there’s significant electrical or electronic component that’s involved in the event. So we really concentrated most on the flame aspect of the hazard and what’s the protection from fire-retardant clothing needed to protect from that.”
According to the Navy source, officials found that existing FR coveralls provide the protection needed for shipboard threats.
In 1996, the Navy rescinded the shipboard flame-resistant requirements and took on a level of fire risk for sailors at sea.
It remains to be seen to what extent leaders will decide to mitigate that ongoing risk."
