Emergency Response Incident Case Study 1967 US Navy

This is clipped from Trial by Fire: A Carrier Burns, a 1973 film produced by the United States Navy about the devastating 1967 fire aboard USS Forrestal off the coast of Vietnam. The film is unique in that it was produced from actual footage of the fire and emergency response efforts, both successful and unsuccessful, taken by on board cameras. Due to the first bomb blast killing nearly all of the specially trained firefighters on the ship, the remaining crew, who had no formal firefighting training, had to improvise. Though there were many firefighting tools available on the Forrestal, including emergency respirators, the general crew was not trained in their use and so were unable to use them correctly. In response to this tragedy, recommendations made were: development of a remote-control fire-fighting system for the flight deck, development of more stable ordnance, improvement in survival equipment, and increased training in emergency response and fire survival. This film has been used to teach new recruits firefighting and emergency response lessons learned in the mishap.
Then Navy pilot John McCain was involved in this incident -- his plane was the original one hit that began this fire. The entire 19 minutes film is available at the Fedflix site on the internet archives at http://www.archive.org/details/gov.ntis.ava19833vnb1 . For more information on the USS Forresstal and this incident, link to http://www.forrestal.org/

Category:

Education

Tags:

• emergency
• response
• first
• responder
• hazwoper
• OSHA
• EPA
• FEMA
• hazmat
• jet
• fuel
• fire
• NIEHS
• incident
• command
• training
• safety
• Forrestal
• hazardous
• material

[YatesyMU]

Haha... I remember watching this video while in the ROTC program at the University of Missouri. It was definitely an informational and poignant video, but I remember thinking the entire time, "Seriously, they haven't made better training videos since 1970??"

Thanks for posting. Do you have "Synthetic Line Snapback" from the same era?

[markdcatlin]

Thanks for your comment. The fact that the incident was captured on film makes this amazing to me. I don't have a copy of "Synthetic Line Snapback" - do you recall who made it? I'll look for it and post it if I find it. Thanks for the suggestion.

Mark

[fictionaa]

this is sad, but insanely good that they have video, if only for the sake of teaching us what happened, and acknowledging the bravery of the people who kept charging into the fire to fight it, even when the risk was so great

[Dannavy85]

God this video brings back memories of Boot Camp back in 1985.

[73XBFalcon]

I remember watching this in bootcamp back in 1988. But, I was already familiar with the fire. My father was serving on Forrestal when this fire occured. He made it ok, but lost alot of friends and shipmates. He passed away in 1998. I still have all his cruise books, including the one from this ill-fated cruise.

[radargod1977]

@HarveyFarkle You got that right Brother! Even though this happened decades ago, we still use it as a valuable training aid. I'm an I-Level Avionics Tech myself but, I make it a point to qual on my ships and get me a DCTT billet so I can train our new Sailors in the basics of shipboard firefighting. They say every Marine is a rifleman, I say every Sailor is a firefighter. GO NAVY!!!

[hulltech2]

It reminds me of Bootcamp in Great Lakes , Il. but to very serious fire on a ship is no joke there is no where to run , you have to fight the beast , because its a long swim back home !!!!

[BLARGHALT]

In case of fire: everyone dies

[hooterb311]

my dad was on the ship when this happened.. i have pictures of it.

[HarveyFarkle]

No, that is not why. John McCain may not be the man he was 10 years ago, I'll give you that. But he was not responsible for the fire on the Forrestal. Then to be a POW, he did his time and to have his record sullied is disgusting. As a Navy Veteran I can tell you that what was learned on that fatefull day, resulted in every kid who joins to learn at least basic firefighting skills. Even I did and I was only a corpsman. Walk a mile in somebody's shoes DICKHEAD!

[P38DLightning]

This was a really good training fill. This video and the video on the USS Bonefish SS-582 fire definitely make me aware of the dangers of not being able to control a fire effectively. Specially on subs when you are working in an enclosed environment.

[Kimberly715]

I remember seeing this at RTC Great Lakes. I remember at the end they asked who were going to be aviation, and a big group of us raised our hands, and the instructor goes "Bet you guys are loving your recruiters now huh?" But I went on to A school, became an ABF and went to work on the flight deck and wouldn't trade any of it.