USS Forrestal Emergency Response Incident Case Study

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This is clipped from Trial by Fire: A Carrier Burns, a 1973 film produced by the United States Navy about the devastating 1967 fire aboard USS Forrestal off the coast of Vietnam. The film is unique in that it was produced from actual footage of the fire and emergency response efforts, both successful and unsuccessful, taken by on board cameras. Due to the first bomb blast killing nearly all of the specially trained firefighters on the ship, the remaining crew, who had no formal firefighting training, had to improvise. Though there were many firefighting tools available on the Forrestal, including emergency respirators, the general crew was not trained in their use and so were unable to use them correctly. In response to this tragedy, recommendations made were: development of a remote-control fire-fighting system for the flight deck, development of more stable ordnance, improvement in survival equipment, and increased training in emergency response and fire survival. This film has been used to teach new recruits firefighting and emergency response lessons learned in the mishap. Then Navy pilot John McCain was involved in this incident -- his plane was the original one hit that began this fire.

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