Why the military says "Regulations are written in blood."

[zzyzzogeton]

Dave's firefighting reminiscences bring back many memories, some not always welcome.

Squids, us Navy types, frequently say "Regs are written in blood." I'm willing to bet that the other services have the same or a similar saying.

That saying is usually being said around the mess decks by an E6 or above or in Officer country, by O2s and above. Most Ensigns can't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel - I know cause I was one. I was fortunate in that I had several excellent E7-E8 ROTC USN/USMC Instructors who beat into our heads that what the book learning we had didn't always apply on a real ship.

For those who have never been in the service, what the phrase means is that many of the rules and regulations that Navy types live by, are the result of someone getting injured or killed.

The Navy has a maintenance system called the Planned Maintenance System, or at least they did when I retired in 1997. I'm sure they still have the system but they may have changed the name to be politically correct, as with everything else in the military, the name was shortened to just PMS.

The PMS is a method of scheduling maintenance to maintain equipment in top condition by trying to PREVENT operational failures.

When failures in the System occur, after investigations, so do changes in the way things are done.

This long-winded explanation leads to THE EVENT, which occurred on the USS CONSTELLATION (CV-64).

The Navy stores flamable liquids, oils, paints, hydraulic fluids, etc, in unoccupied spaces (what the Navy calls rooms on a ship) that are plumbed with fire suppression flooding systems. Most of these systems are charged CO2. A long time ago, main spaces (where the boilers and engines and lots of men worked during a watch period, the flooding system was Halon, which has since been banned for most uses). Before CO2 systems, some of these spaces were sea water floodable.

One of the many PMS actions for snipes was the "testing" of the CO2 flooding systems in these spaces. You don;t want to find out a failure has occured when you have a fire.

The PMS system lists all the tools needed for a task, the level of experience and qualifications to perform the task, the exact sequence of steps to be perforemed and any safety precautions.

When working on the CO2 systems, one of the safety precautions was to have the OBAs (Oxygen Breathing Apparatus) that Dave mentioned in a previous story, present.

Now we're talking nearly 40+ years ago, in 1980 or 1981, so I'm a little fuzzy on details, but IIRC, there were the required 2 men working on doing the maintenance and a 3rd man, a senior E5 or E6 doing a "spot check" on the task as a QC check that the assigned task was being done and done correctly.

The space in question was a paint locker down on the 7th deck, 6 levels below the flight deck, 30 feet underwater. The space had minimal ventilation, was hot and humid and not very big, maybe 20 feet by 20 feet and 3/4 full of cans of paint.

The 2 men performing the maintence were wearing the required 20# OBAs, but the hot, rubber, gasmask-like head piece/face shield with a small plastic viewport that fogged up if you looked at them crooked was NOT being worn. The spot-checking petty officer didn't even have one in the compartment.

The purpose of the OBAs was to provide life-saving O2 in the event the system accidentally discharged. Which it did. The spot-checking PO was near the access ladder, a vertical ladder in a 4 ft by 4 ft riser compartment that extended from the 3rd deck down to the 7th deck. The 3rd deck hatch was open and a safety watch set to make sure no one fell down the open hatch.

When the system discharged, the compartment was filled with CO2 in less than 20 seconds. No one full breath of nothing but CO2 puts you unconscious almost immediately. The working POs dropped like rocks in place. The spot check PO tried to escape up the ladder, but since the hatch to the space was open, the CO2 filled the access ladder faster than he could climb and he passed out and fell to the bottom.

The safety watch happened to look down the ladderway and saw the PO lying at the bottom. Assuming he had fallen, the safety watch failed to do his job and notify someone and maintaing his position. Instead, he starts down the ladder. He gets partway down, breaths CO2, passes out, falls and, like the others, dies.

A non-Engineering CPO (E7) comes on the open hatch with no safety watch and thinks "This is not right.", looks down the hatch as says "Oh, %^&*" and calls for help. He had to stop several people from trying to climb down "to help", saving their lives. He didn't know exactly what was wrong, but he knew that it was a bad situation that needed to be looked at people who knew what to do.

I transfered from Engineering Department to Operations Department shortly after that, so I never got to see the final reports. I did hear about the changes to the way CO2 flooding systens were tested.

The changes were that OBAs were required to be worn COMPLETELY, with the O2 generating candle lit. Any spot-checkers were required to be fully decked out in charged OBAs as well.

The thing is, that spot checker could have been me. There was nothing at the time on the PMS card about spotcheckers having OBAs or that the OBAs should be worn AND charged.

Apparently, everyone up the chain of command to NAVSYSENGCOM had always ASSUMED that there would be enough time to don the mask and charge the candle in the event of an inadvertent activation. Despite all the engineering specs on how fast the space needed to be flooded in the event of a real fire.

Oh, and no one thought about spotcheckers.

Division Officers and Division CPOs are required to do X # of spotcheck each week, Department Heads not as many and COs and XOs a few each month, all part of the system integrity checks to make sure the checks weren't being gun-decked. Which is a term that means "reported as done when it wasn't". Derives from OPSEC during the age of sail.

Sometimes, a CPO or DO from a different division is assigned by the Department Head to ensure integrity. As the Electrical Division Officer, the Chief Engineer had assigned me to such a paint locker CO2 flooding system spotcheck (auxiliaries Division job) the month before as a cross-division spotcheck.

This clueless JG never even thought about why I didn't have an OBA as well. It wasn't on the PMS card, so it didn't apply. Taught me to question everything and raise holy hell when something was unsafe.

Just one of the methods by which someone can become a "non-combat" casualty,

[eveled]

First off. Thanks for your service to our country.

Thanks for sharing the story. So sad they died in that way.

This hits home in an odd way for me. My nephew ships out for USN boot camp today.

I pray for all our service men and women daily, you forget that so many of them are just kids,

[Captain O]

Dave's firefighting reminiscences bring back many memories, some not always welcome.

Squids, us Navy types, frequently say "Regs are written in blood." I'm willing to bet that the other services have the same or a similar saying.

That saying is usually being said around the mess decks by an E6 or above or in Officer country, by O2s and above. Most Ensigns can't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel - I know cause I was one. I was fortunate in that I had several excellent E7-E8 ROTC USN/USMC Instructors who beat into our heads that what the book learning we had didn't always apply on a real ship.

For those who have never been in the service, what the phrase means is that many of the rules and regulations that Navy types live by, are the result of someone getting injured or killed.

The Navy has a maintenance system called the Planned Maintenance System, or at least they did when I retired in 1997. I'm sure they still have the system but they may have changed the name to be politically correct, as with everything else in the military, the name was shortened to just PMS.

The PMS is a method of scheduling maintenance to maintain equipment in top condition by trying to PREVENT operational failures.

When failures in the System occur, after investigations, so do changes in the way things are done.

This long-winded explanation leads to THE EVENT, which occurred on the USS CONSTELLATION (CV-64).

The Navy stores flamable liquids, oils, paints, hydraulic fluids, etc, in unoccupied spaces (what the Navy calls rooms on a ship) that are plumbed with fire suppression flooding systems. Most of these systems are charged CO2. A long time ago, main spaces (where the boilers and engines and lots of men worked during a watch period, the flooding system was Halon, which has since been banned for most uses). Before CO2 systems, some of these spaces were sea water floodable.

One of the many PMS actions for snipes was the "testing" of the CO2 flooding systems in these spaces. You don;t want to find out a failure has occured when you have a fire.

The PMS system lists all the tools needed for a task, the level of experience and qualifications to perform the task, the exact sequence of steps to be perforemed and any safety precautions.

When working on the CO2 systems, one of the safety precautions was to have the OBAs (Oxygen Breathing Apparatus) that Dave mentioned in a previous story, present.

Now we're talking nearly 40+ years ago, in 1980 or 1981, so I'm a little fuzzy on details, but IIRC, there were the required 2 men working on doing the maintenance and a 3rd man, a senior E5 or E6 doing a "spot check" on the task as a QC check that the assigned task was being done and done correctly.

The space in question was a paint locker down on the 7th deck, 6 levels below the flight deck, 30 feet underwater. The space had minimal ventilation, was hot and humid and not very big, maybe 20 feet by 20 feet and 3/4 full of cans of paint.

The 2 men performing the maintence were wearing the required 20# OBAs, but the hot, rubber, gasmask-like head piece/face shield with a small plastic viewport that fogged up if you looked at them crooked was NOT being worn. The spot-checking petty officer didn't even have one in the compartment.

The purpose of the OBAs was to provide life-saving O2 in the event the system accidentally discharged. Which it did. The spot-checking PO was near the access ladder, a vertical ladder in a 4 ft by 4 ft riser compartment that extended from the 3rd deck down to the 7th deck. The 3rd deck hatch was open and a safety watch set to make sure no one fell down the open hatch.

When the system discharged, the compartment was filled with CO2 in less than 20 seconds. No one full breath of nothing but CO2 puts you unconscious almost immediately. The working POs dropped like rocks in place. The spot check PO tried to escape up the ladder, but since the hatch to the space was open, the CO2 filled the access ladder faster than he could climb and he passed out and fell to the bottom.

The safety watch happened to look down the ladderway and saw the PO lying at the bottom. Assuming he had fallen, the safety watch failed to do his job and notify someone and maintaing his position. Instead, he starts down the ladder. He gets partway down, breaths CO2, passes out, falls and, like the others, dies.

A non-Engineering CPO (E7) comes on the open hatch with no safety watch and thinks "This is not right.", looks down the hatch as says "Oh, %^&*" and calls for help. He had to stop several people from trying to climb down "to help", saving their lives. He didn't know exactly what was wrong, but he knew that it was a bad situation that needed to be looked at people who knew what to do.

I transfered from Engineering Department to Operations Department shortly after that, so I never got to see the final reports. I did hear about the changes to the way CO2 flooding systens were tested.

The changes were that OBAs were required to be worn COMPLETELY, with the O2 generating candle lit. Any spot-checkers were required to be fully decked out in charged OBAs as well.

The thing is, that spot checker could have been me. There was nothing at the time on the PMS card about spotcheckers having OBAs or that the OBAs should be worn AND charged.

Apparently, everyone up the chain of command to NAVSYSENGCOM had always ASSUMED that there would be enough time to don the mask and charge the candle in the event of an inadvertent activation. Despite all the engineering specs on how fast the space needed to be flooded in the event of a real fire.

Oh, and no one thought about spotcheckers.

Division Officers and Division CPOs are required to do X # of spotcheck each week, Department Heads not as many and COs and XOs a few each month, all part of the system integrity checks to make sure the checks weren't being gun-decked. Which is a term that means "reported as done when it wasn't". Derives from OPSEC during the age of sail.

Sometimes, a CPO or DO from a different division is assigned by the Department Head to ensure integrity. As the Electrical Division Officer, the Chief Engineer had assigned me to such a paint locker CO2 flooding system spotcheck (auxiliaries Division job) the month before as a cross-division spotcheck.

This clueless JG never even thought about why I didn't have an OBA as well. It wasn't on the PMS card, so it didn't apply. Taught me to question everything and raise holy hell when something was unsafe.

Just one of the methods by which someone can become a "non-combat" casualty,

Damned straight, brother! This is what every Bluejacket learns, or dies learning. I was an Aviation Machinist's Mate, Jet. I get it. Sailors and Marines die every once in a while when regulations aren't followed. It just takes a slight f*ck-up to kill a dozen personnel.

Seen it, Been there, done that. Even on a peaceful hangar deck, I saw the result of an inattentive sailor that closed an aircraft canopy on another sailor's hand. (The female Aircraft Structural Mechanic lost three fingers in 4 seconds).

It only takes a moment.

[Coinfolio]

Confined space is what they call that now, I saw a video about it (not your specific incident) at a training/safety seminar.