
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 9, 1990                   TAG: 9005090718
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/1   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK                                LENGTH: Medium

FATAL SHIP FIRE INVESTIGATED

The guided-missile destroyer USS Conyngham, damaged by a fire so hot its decks were "bubbling," docked today at the Norfolk Naval Station as the Navy began investigating the blaze that killed a crewman.

Eighteen other sailors, including the No. 2 officer, were injured in the worst shipboard fire since a string of accidents prompted the Navy to suspend operations for a two-day safety check in November.

Six of the sailors with less serious injuries accompanied the ship back to port before going to the hospital, said Capt. Paul Hanley, Atlantic Fleet spokesman. Twelve others had been flown from the ship to hospitals.

The Conyngham, with a large scorch mark on its right side just above the water line, docked at 2:30 a.m., 21 hours after the fire erupted during routine operations about 100 miles southeast of Norfolk, said Lt. j.g. Karl Johnson, an Atlantic Fleet spokesman.

The commander of a ship that helped the Conyngham fight the One crewman described hallways filled with smoke, holes burned in the floor, masks on firefighting gear that melted onto the faces of his shipmates and `decks that were bubbling' in the intense heat blaze said today that it was "a majorleague fire" that could have destroyed the warship.

Capt. Joseph Perrotta, skipper of the USS Normandy, said that when he approached the Conyngham, smoke was pouring out of the ship's forward stack area and bridge. The Normandy provided additional firefighting equipment and personnel to help the Conyngham crew control the blaze.

The Conyngham crew "did a super job of putting out that fire," Perrotta said. "The ship could have been lost if not for the gallant effort of the crew."

About 200 family members and friends met the 383-member crew, which disembarked as work crews from other vessels boarded the Conyngham to clear the vessel's decks of water, Hanley said.

Naval Investigative Service agents were flown to the ship earlier to help preserve evidence, said Cmdr. Deborah Burnette, an Atlantic Fleet spokeswoman.

The fire aboard the 27-year-old ship started in the No. 1 boiler room as the boiler was being fired up, and spread to the ship's nerve center, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said.

"The fire spread to the combat information center spaces, which caused the captain to evacuate the combat information center and the bridge, temporarily leaving the ship without communications and dead in the water," Fitzwater said.

One of the injured was seaman James Choss of Hammond Lake, Ind., an electrician getting ready for bed after working most of the night in the combat information center, his mother said.

"One of the other guys in the room was hit by a fireball that singed his hair," Elizabeth Choss said. Her son described hallways filled with smoke, holes burned in the floor, masks on firefighting gear that melted onto the faces of his shipmates and "decks that were bubbling" in the intense heat, she said.

"It was just trashed - those were his words," she said.

by CNB