Admiral visits beleaguered ship as cases rise
Leader of 7th Fleet answers crew’s questions amid turmoil
One day after a muchcriticized speech that cost the Navy’s top official his job, the commander of the Navy’s 7th Fleet walked onto the hangar deck of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in Guam and spent 90 minutes answering questions from its beleaguered crew.
The address Tuesday by Navy Vice Adm. William Merz was much better received than Monday’s now infamous address by former Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly, said sources who spoke to The Chronicle. But the questionandanswer session came amid another large jump in the number of coronavirus infections on the ship.
The Navy said Wednesday that 286 sailors have tested positive and 2,588 negative, with 93% of the crew having been tested. But one Roosevelt sailor’s father, Mark Blakewood of Orange Park, Fla., said Wednesday his son, who recently tested positive, saw 96 infected sailors enter the gymnasium where he is being treated in the previous 12 hours.
“Way low,” the elder Blakewood called the Navy’s latest tally.
Merz’s visit came as The Chronicle reported that sailors aboard the ship have been disinfecting and cleaning the vessel while wearing little protective gear, many fashioning ripped Tshirts into improvised masks, a practice instituted by the Pentagon on Sunday.
Friday will mark two weeks docked in Guam for the Roosevelt, a frenetic port call that has seen infection rates soar among the ship’s nearly 5,000member crew, the ouster of its commanding officer and the sudden resignation of the head of the Navy. Capt. Brett Crozier’s candid letter to Navy command, first reported by The Chronicle, sent shock waves through the military establishment as he pleaded for resources to stem the coronavirus outbreak aboard the nuclearpowered warship.
The 50yearold Santa Rosa native’s letter prompted the Navy to begin getting sailors off the ship and into onshore quarters, but it also cost him his job. Modly removed him last week, saying his sharing of the letter with people outside the chain of command allowed it to become public and undermined national security.
Modly took a 19hour flight from Washington to Guam to address the crew. His obscenityladen remarks, in which he suggested Crozier was either “stupid” or “naive,” shocked and angered the crew and ultimately led to his resignation.
In his meeting with crew members Tuesday, Merz responded to questions posed by sailors on the carrier’s hangar bay. Photos of the session show crew members attempting to keep their distance from each other, with many of them wearing masks or other face coverings.
More sailors have been moved off the ship in recent days, the Navy reported, with more than 2,300 now onshore. Navy photos from Tuesday show sailors disembarking from the carrier to waiting vans to take them to 14day quarantines in Guam hotels.
In another Navy photo from Tuesday, a sailor wearing a Tshirt over his face is shown having his temperature taken. Other photos show crews setting up mobile intensive care units on Guam in the event sailors need hospitalization. So far, there have been no hospitalizations among those on the ship.
Meanwhile, the Navy rebutted a report by Politico that a sailor had tested positive on the Nimitz carrier, which would have made it the fourth carrier to have a positive test.
“A sailor displayed symptoms, was placed into isolation off the ship out of an abundance of caution, and subsequently had testing that was inconclusive,” said Cmdr. John Fage, of the U.S. 3rd Fleet. “Sailors that had been in close contact with the individual were also removed from the ship as a precaution and placed into quarantine. That sailor remains off the ship.”
A second Nimitz sailor had tested positive for the coronavirus, he said, while outside of Washington on leave in early March. That crew member remains at that location and has not returned to the ship, which is docked in Bremerton, Wash., Fage said.
The Ronald Reagan and Carl Vinson carriers, which are undergoing maintenance, have also reported positive cases.