US navy renews safety focus

Sailors reflect on shipmates who are gone

ABOARD THE USS NIMITZ, Aug 26, (AP): Half a world away from two deadly US Navy accidents, sailors on America’s massive USS Nimitz aircraft carrier reflect on the shipmates they knew who are gone. Their commanders want to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again.

The wrenching deaths of sailors, drowned this week while trapped in their bunks on the USS John S. McCain, have reverberated around the American fleet. The Navy has found the remains of two of 10 who were declared missing after the ship crashed into an oil tanker, and the search goes on for others in coastal waters off Singapore. Just in June, seven sailors died when another destroyer, the USS Fitzgerald, hit a container ship off Japan.

Out in the blazing Arabian Gulf heat on the Nimitz’s flight deck, fighter jets line up to launch for surveillance, intelligence and bombing missions in Iraq and Syria. Up to 10 times a day, a wave of aircraft blasts into the sky to support the US military’s fight against the Islamic State group in Raqqa, Syria, and Tal Afar, Iraq.

But those battle flights off the Nimitz will soon pause for a day.

Focus

Adm John Richardson, the top US Navy officer, has ordered that ships around the world stop and retrain, relearn and focus on proper procedures and safety precautions to prevent more collisions or mishaps.

“It’s important for all of us to take a knee,” said Rear Adm Bill Byrne, commander of the carrier strike group that includes the Nimitz and six other ships in the Arabian Gulf and surrounding region. “It makes all of us appropriately ask ourselves, ‘Are we ready if it happens to us?’”

In response to the McCain and Fitzgerald accidents, Richardson, who is chief of naval operations, removed the commander of the Navy’s 7th Fleet and ordered all ships to pause while they ensure safe operations. Among

ency, Trump pardoned the deeply-divisive 85-year-old who ignored a federal court order that he stop detaining illegal migrants.

the questions they’re supposed to answer: Are sailors standing watch with vigilance? Are they communicating with commanders when problems arise? Are commanders responsive or asleep at the wheel?

There has been a renewed focus on even the simplest of things, Cdr Dave Kurtz, executive officer of the USS Nimitz, said. These include asking sailors if they have a safe, rapid way out when they’re in their bunks, or if anything is blocking their path.

The Navy hasn’t said on what day the pause in operations will happen.

And the Nimitz is in a unique situation, conducting combat operations in two countries. A large ship like an aircraft carrier can’t simply be shut down This July 8, 2017 image taken from dashboard video and provided by the Johnston County District Attorneys Office shows a law enforcement officer approaching the scene where authorities say a woman crashed along Interstate 40 in Johnston County, North Carolina. The Johnston County district attorney announced on Aug 25 that she cleared a deputy and trooper of wrongdoing in the fatal shooting of the

woman. (AP)

for a day, so the pause will have to be planned and coordinated carefully.

“We have to find a way to do the pause,” Kurtz said. “It’s important to do it.”

Byrne said the entire air wing will try to do it all in one day. He said the wars make it difficult for the wing to just shut down operations, so the pause will have to be planned for a day when airstrikes aren’t needed from the carrier.

Visiting the Nimitz and another Navy ship this week, Gen. Joseph Votel, the top US commander for the Middle East, offered condolences for the lost shipmates. He called the incidents a “heavy reminder” of what comes with “service to our nation.”