FRIDAY FOTO (December 4, 2020)

A Different Mask for Work.

(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Drace Wilson)

Sailors fight a simulated fire during a general quarters drill aboard the guided missile destroyer USS Sterett. The Sterett is part of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group and is conducting maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts.

In the Navy, they take fires very seriously. At Naval Service Training Command in Great Lakes, Illinois — the Navy’s only enlisted boot camp –recruits are trained in firefighting as one of five basic competencies, which also include damage control, watch standing, seamanship and small-arms handling and marksmanship.

Just how serious was driven home in July when the amphibious assault ship, USS Bonhomme Richard, caught fire beside the pier at Naval Base San Diego, California and burned for four days. No lives were lost but the 22-year-old Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) was. It had been in San Diego since 2018 undergoing more than $250 million in modernization improvements.

On November 30, the Navy announced it had decided to decommission and scrap the Bonhomme Richard, according to SEAPOWER.

Navy Secretary Kenneth  Braithwaite and the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Gilday made the decision after the Navy completed a comprehensive material assessment and considered three possible outcomes.

Rear Admiral Eric H. Ver Hage, director of Surface Ship Maintenance and Modernization at Naval Sea Systems Command, said rebuilding and repairing the Wasp-class amphibious assault vessel would have taken five to seven years and cost an estimated $2.5 billion to $3.2 billion.

Alternatively, rebuilding the ship as another type of ship — such as a hospital ship — would have taken five to seven years and cost more than $1 billion, more than a new alternative ship is estimated to cost, Ver Hage said.

Replacing the Bonhomme Richard with a new America-class (LHA 6) amphibious assault ship would take five to six years and cost an estimated $4.1 billion, he said.