I believe it was during our second trip to GITMO for sea trials. We were in for a weekend at San Juan. My watch group had just gotten off the 4 to 8 watch and were in the mess hall enjoying some breakfast.

Suddenly the lights went out!  That could mean only one thing, the boiler had gone down. (I know a multitude of other things could have caused the lights to go out, but the boiler going down was the most obvious.) I hit the stairs to the  #2 fire room and slid down the rails. It was dark and there was a lot of yelling.

I hit the watch cousul and got a quick assesment of what was going on. There was a fire in the air casing that surrounded the #1 boiler. It was like it was alive! The exterior of the boiler was moving in and out like it was panting.  The fellow that had relieved me was trying to turn on the "steam blanket"  This was normal proceedure for a fire in the air casing. The trouble was - the steam blanket line was on the exit side of the shut down valve, and the boys' first thoughts were to shut down the boiler. No steam could get into the air casing.

I went to the lower deck and grabbed a Carbon Dioxide nossel and hose and pulled it up to the main boiler floor. BT 1st class Twigg got a hammer and busted out the site glass in the air casing.  We filled the air casing with the Carbon Dioxide and put out the fire. The Carbon Dioxide did a number on the boiler parts, but it got the fire out. I saw my life pass before my eyes on that one.

It cost us a few more days in GITMO and limited us to 3 boilers. It turned out that a "Boot" had put the burner atomizers in backwards when they changed the burners on the 8 to 12 watch. This caused the oil to back up in the burner and go on to the floor of the air casing, finally combusting.  We had several training sessions after that one and revised a few of the how to's.