THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 10, 1995 TAG: 9505090295
SECTION: MILITARY NEWS PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
The black smoke is about to disappear from the skies around Norfolk Naval Base.
For more than 50 years, people who live near the base on Sewells Point have been aggravated by dark plumes that have boiled into the air above their houses. It comes from fuel oil burned at the Fleet Training Center's Farrier Firefighting School.
That practice will end in June or July when the school phases in a new propane-based system to simulate shipboard fires and train personnel in putting them out.
The Navy is exempt from air pollution-control laws that might have prevented the oil burning so it can provide realistic training, said Frank Daniel, regional director of the Department of Environmental Quality, a state agency.
The agency's monitors showed no effect on local air quality from the burning, but nearby residents complained that the smoke covered their laundry and houses in soot.
``People who called up and got mad were not very nice,'' said Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Carambia, director of the firefighting school, opened in 1942 at the northwest corner of the base.
They'll have no reason to complain about the new system, he said.
``A diesel truck will make more smoke going down the road than my new trainers will,'' Carambia said.
The propane system will be unveiled Monday and will take over all training functions within a few weeks.
The burning is meant to teach students, in part, about the blinding effect of smoke. The new system produces white smoke that will be contained within training structures.
It's not only cleaner but safer, Carambia said.
``You can light fires quicker with propane, have more positive control of the fires and have a better training environment for the students,'' he said.
Until now, the school has burned 700 gallons of fuel oil a day on 21 training days each month. It produces a real-life scenario for students - the same type of heat and the same billowing, choking black smoke they would find if a fire ever broke out on their ships or aircraft.
But there was a hitch. In the old system, if a student panicked - in a mockup of a narrow passageway, for example, an instructor could immediately stop the oil from flowing - but the fire kept burning until it died on its own.
With propane, one push of a button instantly stops both the vapor and flame. There's even a pause button that an instructor can use to make an adjustment - helping a student make a correction, for instance, to a fire hose spray pattern.
The new training system includes a 60,000-gallon distribution plant that will convert liquid propane to vapor, plus six new structures: a three-story trainer, four shipboard trainers and an aviation firefighting trainer.
The new trainers can duplicate nearly any space aboard a ship or aircraft. Like a child's Transformer toy, with fold-out parts, the mockups can mimic berthing compartments, ship passageways, kitchen and mess areas or aircraft cockpits.
Next year, 27,000 personnel will go through Norfolk's new trainer.
Similar propane systems already are being used at Navy installations in Florida, Rhode Island, Michigan and California.
``If we can pass all of the established criteria about air quality in California,'' Carambia said, ``which we already have, then we more than exceed any requirements here in Virginia.'' ILLUSTRATION: GARY C. KNAPP
The flight deck crew of the carrier John C. Stennis, scheduled to be
commissioned in December, fight a fire at the Fleet Training
Center's Farrier Firefighting School in Norfolk.
by CNB