NYT reports that one of the US aircraft carriers has to withdraw to port due to a laundry room fire. About 600 sailors lost access to their bunks.
The fire, according to two officials, began in the vent of a dryer in the ship’s laundry facilities and quickly spread. Sailors battled the blaze for more than 30 hours, officials and sailors said.
The Navy did not respond to a request for comment. Central Command said in its statement that the fire caused “no damage to the ship’s propulsion plant, and the aircraft carrier remains fully operational.”
They wouldn’t need to do that much either. The sewerage system was a new vacuum-based system that was supposed to be more efficient, but ended up being very finicky/fragile, and on top of that, was undersized for the demands of the crew, since it was designed around the average usage on a ship, rather than the peak usage.
So when everyone decides they want to go to the WC and have a shower after a shift, the thing would back up because it couldn’t keep up.