With the caveat that I can’t verify this, I came upon an interesting analysis on a leaked video purporting to show damage on America’s newest carrier following an onboard fire reported as starting in the laundry area. It looks like the damage may be more serious than has been officially reported and she may be out for a while for proper assessment and repair. This analysis reads like there was a failure in fire containment and it spread a fair bit.
USS Gerald R Ford fire - March 2026
- Thread starter brihard
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Oldgateboatdriver
Army.ca Fixture
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Video means little. It's a fire in a below deck compartment. Unless it was stopped, somehow, at a very early stage (i.e. with fire extinguishers), it would look like that in any events. And if it actually spread to one or more adjacent compartment ... well, tough luck! It happens!
Last I've seen , they didn't lose any crew member as a result, nor did it affect operational availability.
That's life at sea on a warship. Shit happens!
Last I've seen , they didn't lose any crew member as a result, nor did it affect operational availability.
That's life at sea on a warship. Shit happens!
Right. The tweet thread gave more information about why the poster opined as he did. I posted just the first one.
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Except, as I understand it, operational availability was affected, severely. They had to come off station during operations and are now in Croatia for repairs.
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"Shit Happens" is not a thing in most circumstances.
"We ignored issues until shit happened" is a thing.
Unfortunately, a military attitude that ignores problems until shit happens, then blames the CO when shit happens, instead of holding prior COs to account for permitting shit to happen is anathema to the military.
"We ignored issues until shit happened" is a thing.
Unfortunately, a military attitude that ignores problems until shit happens, then blames the CO when shit happens, instead of holding prior COs to account for permitting shit to happen is anathema to the military.
OldSolduer
Army.ca Relic
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We got lucky on MON when our only operation ROD system decided to spontaneously combust whilst at sea in 2015.
First, the engineering roundsman was actually in the space at the time - and he was both skilled and brave. He grabbed the extinguisher, dumped contents on it, and by the time the Rapid Response Team arrived, they were able to simply overhaul the fire.
Second. Since it was our only operational ROD, the part which burned was not the broken part on the other ROD....so the stokers were able to rob parts from the burned one to fix the unburned one....and we were able to proceed with a few hours loss of water production.
(ROD = Reverse Osmosis Desalination System)
We were able to carry on with Work Ups.
I'll observe, every ship I sailed on in my 26 year Navy Career had a real fire, flood, or other DC incident onboard. Every ship.
There were an average of 10 minor/major fires per year fleet wide annually when I worked at DC Div (120 fires over 12 years of studied data).
Fires and floods happen. They spread quickly and double in size in just over a minute.
My observation would be that I think the crew did well to keep it as 'small' as they did, and I'd be fascinated to see what their incident boards looked like after the fire - but - that'll be classified/protected info until at least the BOI (or USN equivalent) is complete. Maybe forever.
NS
First, the engineering roundsman was actually in the space at the time - and he was both skilled and brave. He grabbed the extinguisher, dumped contents on it, and by the time the Rapid Response Team arrived, they were able to simply overhaul the fire.
Second. Since it was our only operational ROD, the part which burned was not the broken part on the other ROD....so the stokers were able to rob parts from the burned one to fix the unburned one....and we were able to proceed with a few hours loss of water production.
(ROD = Reverse Osmosis Desalination System)
We were able to carry on with Work Ups.
I'll observe, every ship I sailed on in my 26 year Navy Career had a real fire, flood, or other DC incident onboard. Every ship.
There were an average of 10 minor/major fires per year fleet wide annually when I worked at DC Div (120 fires over 12 years of studied data).
Fires and floods happen. They spread quickly and double in size in just over a minute.
My observation would be that I think the crew did well to keep it as 'small' as they did, and I'd be fascinated to see what their incident boards looked like after the fire - but - that'll be classified/protected info until at least the BOI (or USN equivalent) is complete. Maybe forever.
NS
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Can you repost the text of the other posts int he thread? I don't have twitter so I can't read the thread.
As others have said, a fire like that would get real hot real fast. Even with boundaries all around the fire quickly to contain it, the heat could overwhelm them and force them to back out of the space. Water might help cool the deck, but if the deck is hot enough you're just making steam and cooking your boundary.
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