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A fire that caused an estimated $400 million in damage to a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarine docked in Maine may have been caused by a vacuum cleaner, authorities said on Wednesday.
The fire in the forward compartment - which includes crew living, command and control spaces and the torpedo room - of the USS Miami on May 23 took about 12 hours to extinguish and injured seven firefighters.
“Preliminary findings indicate the fire started in a vacuum cleaner used to clean work sites at end of shift, and stored in an unoccupied space,” the shipyard’s public affairs office said in a release. Specific details are still being evaluated.
Originally posted by HawkeyeNation
This just sounds fishy. I mean seriously with today's technology how in the # does a fire spread that far on a $900 #ing million dollar sub?????!!!!??? Man if you need some remodeling just come out and say it and don't even bother starting a stupid fire.
KITTERY, Maine — U.S. Navy investigators said it was not a malfunction within the vacuum cleaner that caused the fire aboard the USS Miami on May 23. Rather, something hot was sucked into a vacuum cleaner that subsequently ignited materials within.
Moreover, the Navy said in statement released Friday, the vacuum cleaner should have been emptied. Navy Public Affairs said shipyards "are directed to empty ... vacuum cleaners each shift, or remove them from the ship."
According to a statement released by the public affairs office at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, the fire started with a "heat source" that was vacuumed up, "igniting debris in the vacuum cleaner."
The vacuum, one "you would find in a typical shop environment," was unplugged at the time the fire began. So were others in the storage area where the one that caused the fire was kept.
Public Affairs Officer Gary Hildreth said he couldn't confirm that the fire started in only one vacuum cleaner, and the statement is unclear whether one or more ignited. Reference is made several times to a single vacuum cleaner, and yet there's a statement that "there was no apparent defect that would have caused the vacuums to ignite."