Front Burner

by Kirk S. Lippold

  Standing there in CCS watching the messengers delivering vital information to each of the two teams at work, I watched as Chris and Debbie continued to develop a better picture of the status of the ship. After silently watching what was going on for about thirty to forty-five seconds, I finally said, “Engineer, XO, when you two are ready, tell me what we’ve got.” Seconds later, both were standing in front of me.

  Chris then updated me on the damage to the ship as messengers from the repair lockers continued to report it. He reported that they had initially been unable to establish normal communications via the ship’s internal voice communications system (IVCS). Falling back on the standard for shipboard communications since World War II, they had gone to the secondary system of sound-powered phones. This phone system requires only the power of a sailor’s voice to vibrate a diaphragm, which transmits those vibrations through a drive rod to an armature centered in a wire coil, creating an electric current that is transmitted to a receiver, where the process is reversed and the voice can be heard. Even though this system is extremely reliable, they were only able to communicate with Repair 3; apparently the sound-powered phone system to Repair 2 was not working.

  In an attempt to overcome this obstacle, Chris had ordered emergency communications wires, also known as salt and pepper lines, to be strung from the central control station to Repair 2. A team had been busy doing this when I walked in. Within a few minutes of my arrival, however, sound-powered communications were established and maintained with both repair lockers. While standing there taking reports, messengers from the repair lockers ran in and out of CCS with messages. Even with communications established, the most reliable form of communication, a sailor from a repair locker would be used for the near term to guarantee the flow of information.

  The battery backup system—the alarm systems for the ship to sound general quarters and other emergencies—which was tied to the 1MC system, even the alarm indicator systems that could have shown the engineers in the command center where the ship might be experiencing flooding, fire, or smoke—all had failed. Without these systems, the crew did not have the benefit of anyone or anything to tell them what to do or what had happened to the ship. But they did not let that stop them from doing what they could see obviously had to be done.

  In the immediate aftermath of the explosion the engineers had determined that none of the alarms could be relied on to provide accurate data, and they quickly came to ignore them. Every few seconds as I stood there, alarm indicator lights would start flashing and their associated aural annunciators would start ringing from random signals in the system. Each time, someone would reach out and immediately press a button to acknowledge and silence them without even bothering to determine their origin or cause. It was controlled pandemonium as everyone was trying to figure out what happened.

  Debbie briefed me on the status of the engineering plant, including the generator and what pumps were online. Next she told me about the lack of firemain pressure, which would make it impossible to fight a serious fire if one broke out. Everyone in the central control station was on edge knowing that thousands of gallons of fuel had leaked into the area beneath the smashed galley and into the destroyed main engine room 1. If those areas could not be quickly and completely electrically isolated and the fuel flashed to a major conflagration, the ship would have almost no chance of staying afloat. She also reported that one of the two still functioning gas turbine electricity generators had shut down, for unknown reasons, and that power was out in the forward two-thirds of the ship. Chris confirmed that main engine room 1, the general workshop, and the fuel lab, which controlled the flow of fuel into the tanks during refueling, had all been destroyed and flooded. Two members of the crew who had been working in the lab with “Drew” Triplett at the time of the explosion, Gas Turbine Systems Technician-Electrical Second Class Robert McTureous and Gas Turbine Systems Technician-Mechanical First Class Kathy Lopez, had survived the blast, though severely injured, and had escaped by swimming out of the hole in the side of the ship into the harbor, where shipmates fished them out to safety. Triplett was still missing.

  I already knew the galley had been destroyed, and now learned that water pouring into the ship had flooded auxiliary machinery room 2 just aft of main engine room 1, the supply office and supply support, as well as the reefer deck, where all the ship’s canned and packaged food was stored. The refrigeration machinery and the computers that tracked maintenance records and personnel watch qualifications had also been inundated. Water was also seeping into main engine room 2, the largest single space on the ship, with the gas turbine engines that powered the port propeller shaft and other vital equipment. All around the starboard shaft where it passed through the bulkhead separating this engine room from auxiliary machinery room 2 and the flooded spaces forward, water was spraying in at high pressure.

  The situation was dire. Debbie looked up and even though she knew the answer, asked: “Captain, are we going to lose the ship?” The engineers heard the question, stopped what they were doing, and listened.

  “No, we are not going to sink,” I said after only a brief pause. “If those are the only spaces we’ve lost, we are not going to sink.” On Arleigh Burke–class destroyers like this one, it was possible to sustain flooding damage to all four of the main engineering spaces and remain afloat, if just barely. Cole had as yet lost only two of these spaces to flooding. “Let’s get the flooding and shoring teams down there,” I ordered, and the mood immediately changed. The sense of relief was almost palpable.

  But bad news kept coming in. The repair lockers were reporting no firefighting water pressure, and Debbie and her engineers had shut down the pumps that pressurized the system. The ship would be in grave danger if fire broke out. Chris and Debbie were both aware of the live-wire problem in the ruined engine room and the galley, now full of water and fuel, and Chris had ordered aqueous film-forming foam liquid poured in to try to prevent ignition. Teams of sailors had dragged blue five-gallon jugs of it to the galley area and were pouring it down into the blast hole. Soon the repair locker teams were able to isolate and bypass the part of the firemain that had been severed. The fire pumps were restarted and, with the pressure successfully raised to the required 150-psi mark, damage control teams began spraying fire-fighting foam around the entire area damaged by the explosion. The imminent danger, it seemed, was past. The rescue and triage of wounded crew members and their treatment in hospitals was the next priority.

  6

  Saving the Wounded

  I LEFT THE CENTRAL CONTROL STATION knowing that the damage control effort was well in hand. Altogether, it was clear that the men and women of USS Cole were doing a noble and heroic job of saving their ship and their shipmates, one that would go down in the annals as one of the most distinguished such performances in the history of the Navy.

  I stepped gingerly between the wounded lying on the deck, who were still being attended to by their shipmates. Walking forward again toward the mess decks, I found that the sailor who had been killed outright by the blast hitting the mess decks still lay in the passageway. He had been covered in a blanket and moved to the side. I paused for just a moment to consider the daunting hours ahead of us and then moved on.

  Crossing through the dark mess decks, I reentered the small vestibule at the forward end that led to the mangled area of the mess line. Instead of going through, however, I went up the ladder to the watertight door that opened back onto the open area at the middle of the ship. The carnage of the injuries seen so far in the crew hardened my resolve to save them. No matter what my feelings were inside, now was the time to dip into that inner reserve of strength and be strong for their sake. As their captain it was my duty and obligation not to let them down.

  For many of the crew, the blast and its immediate aftereffects had seemed like an eternity packed into a few short seconds. After the odd twisting and flexing of the ship slowed and Cole settled back into the water next to the pier, there was a deafening
silence, followed by the thump of boots running through the passageways. Inside the galley, where so many had been getting early lunch when the blast came, it was almost pitch dark with thick, acrid smoke. Seconds later the screams and moans of the wounded echoed off the bulkheads.

  Hospital Corpsman Third Class Tayinikia Campbell had just finished listening to the XO announce a few minutes before that the ship would finish up refueling early and get underway in about two hours. Standing in the medical treatment room, she was listening to the CD player as an RJ Kelly song thumped in the background. There with her was a young deck seaman, Eben Sanchez-Zuniga, who had just transferred into the Medical Division to learn the hospital corpsman profession. Suddenly the whole ship shook violently beneath them, the lights went out, and the CD player went dead. Campbell was thrown backward as the doors to medical flew open with an ear-splitting bang and smoke poured in. She and Sanchez looked at each other and instantly headed off to their emergency stations.

  Petty Officer Campbell had taken only a few steps before she began to hear the voices calling, “I need a doc, I need a doc!” She turned and faced the devastation of the mess line and the smoke-filled confusion of the starboard passageway and hollered, “I’m right here!” She asked another sailor to take her keys to the aft battle dressing station where she had been headed and unlock it, but right now she needed to help the wounded at her feet. As she worked in the cramped space of the passageway, the wounded just seemed to keep coming from the area of the mess line, from inside the mess decks, and soon from inside the chiefs’ mess. At one point, she remembered hearing herself ask out loud, “Where is my Chief? Where is Doc?” A hand touched her shoulder and she looked up to see Lieutenant Mikal Phillips, Cole’s gunnery officer, who had heard her question. “It’s all on you, kiddo,” he said quietly. They expected the worst, but unknown to either of them, “Doc,” Hospital Corpsman Chief Clifford Moser, the ship’s senior medical corpsman, had survived, but was working on other wounded sailors topside, in the center of the ship between the stacks.

  Master Chief Parlier was also a medical corpsman, but as the senior non-commissioned officer on board, his duties as command master chief lay elsewhere, with helping Chris and me run the ship. Now, in the middle of a medical crisis, his skills once again turned toward saving lives. Just after the explosion, he had made his way from the back of the ship to as far as the barbershop when he saw Chief Mark Darwin, a gas turbine systems technician, lying on the deck with extensive injuries to his left side. Darwin had just finished eating lunch in the chiefs’ mess when the blast picked him up and threw him through the air, knocking him briefly unconscious. When he came to, he heard groans and moans around him but could see nothing. The mess was completely dark, thick with acrid smoke and it was sealed shut by the wreckage. He was bleeding from his wrist and his left arm and shoulder did not seem to work. Taking a rag out of his coverall pocket, he tied it as best he could to stem the flow of blood. When it became possible, he crawled out into what had been the galley, over what felt to him like the bodies of dead or wounded sailors, until he was picked up and carried to the area near the back of the ship by the barbershop and Repair 3. Master Chief Parlier determined that Chief Darwin had broken bones in his left shoulder, broken left ribs with a possible punctured lung, and unknown internal injuries in his abdomen, besides the deep cut on his left wrist.

  Someone hollered down at Parlier that there were more wounded in the starboard passageway near the back of the ship. He dashed up the stairs to the engineering office, where the most seriously injured were temporarily staged, and found lying on the deck in front of him the most seriously wounded sailor he had yet seen—Seaman Craig Wibberley. Wibberley had been standing in the mess line at the time of the explosion. In its aftermath he had severe injuries on his right side, and what Parlier judged to be life-threatening head trauma. His breathing was labored. Master Chief immediately ordered several other sailors nearby to help get Wibberley loaded into a litter for evacuation out to the flight deck. By this time, the urgency of getting the wounded attended to had overridden my initial concerns about topside security, and by the time they got Wibberley’s litter out into the heat of the day, Master Chief was taken aback to see at least a dozen wounded crew members lying on the flight deck, being worked on by other crew members. “Airway, breathing, circulation!” he hollered out to them. “That’s the most important. Monitor them, and if you need me to look at them, let me know.” Master Chief began trying to treat Wibberley, assisted by Fire Controlman Chief Jonathan Walker. Parlier put his ear on Wibberley’s chest and could hear that both lungs were rapidly filling with fluid. As the pulse began to weaken, Master Chief started cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), but Wibberley’s life signs were fading away. In the background, there were screams and moans, and other crew members crying out, “Corpsman!”

  In Parlier’s mind’s eye, a memory flashed by as he recalled Wibberley only recently standing before the ship’s Professional Development Board. While assigned to Deck Division, he had taken his time in deciding what career path he wanted to take in the Navy. After months of thinking about it, Wibberley submitted a request chit to start training to become an information technology specialist. As he stood before the board, he knew he faced an uphill battle to leave Deck Division. Billets for undesignated deck seamen like him had been undermanned by almost 30 percent since the beginning of our deployment, because of Navy-wide manpower shortages. At the end of the board’s deliberations, however, he was unexpectedly rewarded with a compromise: as long as he could keep up on his work and watch assignments in Deck Department, he could start training with the information technology (IT) personnel in preparation for attending an advanced training school. In a flash, Master Chief Parlier remembered his smile and unending gratitude to the board members as he left the chiefs’ mess that day. Now, all those hopes and ambitions were fading away as Wibberley struggled to breathe his last.

  Finally, Chief Walker quietly spoke up. “James, you need to stop,” he told the Master Chief. “You’ve got to look around.”

  Almost two dozen wounded needed his lifesaving skills. Now, for the first time in his life, Master Chief found himself before the most difficult of all decisions. By this point Wibberley had stopped breathing. Master Chief lifted his hands, sighed, said a short prayer over Craig Wibberley’s body, and the decision was made.

  Steeling himself to deal with the rest of the wounded, he turned to attend to the next most seriously wounded sailor, Electronic Warfare Technician Third Class Johann Gokool, who was screaming with excruciating pain. Gokool had been standing in the mess line near the point where the deck was violently ripped apart and was blown back along the passageway toward the starboard side of the ship. The force of the impact had had a brutal effect on his lower legs and feet. His boots were literally blown open and both feet were visible through gaps in the shredded seams. They appeared to be mangled beyond recovery and blood seeped out onto the deck between them. The sailors attending to him were preparing to cut off his boot, but Master Chief told them to stop and wrap bandages around the entire extremity. It was better to keep the injury contained than try to deal with it on the ship. Within minutes, Gokool’s feet were wrapped and he was gently taken up the ladder to be staged in the amidships area for evacuation.

  Master Chief then spotted a sailor leaning up against the bulkhead in a forward corner of the flight deck. Working over Operations Specialist Second Class Timothy Saunders was Seaman Sanchez-Zuniga, the corpsman trainee who had been with Campbell when the explosion hit. Saunders had a severe cut or gouge in the back of his left upper leg. Sanchez-Zuniga had already inspected the wound and wrapped it tightly to stem the bleeding. But even before Master Chief bent down to give Saunders a more thorough examination, he could tell that despite the apparently superficial wounds, his condition was grave. He was likely suffering internal injuries that they simply could not treat amidst this pandemonium. Saunders murmured, “Man, I don’t feel good, Master Chief. I
don’t feel good.” Master Chief just looked directly at him, “We’re going to take care of you. Sanchez has done a great job. He’s going to reinforce that dressing, we’re not going to take it off, and we’re going to get you out of here.”

  It was harder than the Master Chief had ever imagined it would be. But with every step he took, he was saving lives.

  Standing in the mess line at the moment of the blast, Signalman Second Class Hector Figueroa had just placed his right hand on the Plexiglas menu board just outside Master Chief Parlier’s office when he was stunned by the loudest noise he had ever heard in his life and felt a tremendous force pressing his eyeglasses into his face, and searing heat. He and the people around him were thrown through the air and slammed hard into the starboard passageway wall. “The kitchen must have blown up,” Figueroa thought.

  Staggering back upright, Figueroa ran toward the galley. He could see a body lying on the deck, staring lifelessly back at him. Behind the debris was another sailor, pinned under what looked like the remnants of the ship’s oven, her left leg bent out at an impossible angle. “I can’t do this by myself,” Figueroa thought, and yelled out, “Wounded in the galley!” to get others to help. He heard a cry from somewhere lower down and, peering through the scuttle opening of the hatch that led to the ladder and the refrigerators one deck below, saw Mess Specialist Third Class Joseph Davis, standing unsteadily near the entrance. “My leg is broken,” Davis said, and Figueroa saw that water was slowly flooding the space where he was. He slid through the scuttle hole, went down the stairway, and leaned over to wrap his arm around Davis’s shoulders and try to pull him up toward safety.

  Another sailor came up to Figueroa and told him Storekeeper Second Class Sean Taitt was trapped down in the supply office, a deck lower than the already flooding refrigeration deck. “Got him,” Figueroa answered, and wriggled through the scuttle hole again and went down until he saw Taitt, a solid, muscular man who was one of the best weightlifters and workout hounds on the ship, standing unsteadily near the door to the supply office. “Shock, he must be in shock,” Figueroa thought to himself. Water, now thigh deep, churned around their legs. He grabbed Taitt and then began lifting, dragging, and pushing him up two sets of stairs to the scuttle hole, where Figueroa was relieved to see Personnelman Third Class Nicole “Nikki” Lozano’s face looking down. She offered to help, and together they worked Taitt up through the hole and out onto the mess decks to be treated for his injuries.