Gas Masks News

Up to a dozen containers carrying chemicals caught fire at a terminal at Brazil's largest port of Santos on Thursday, restricting ship movement, representatives of the port authority Codesp said. The fire at the container terminal operated by logistics company Localfrio in Guaruja, on the eastern side of Santos, started around 3 p.m. Brasilia time (1700 GMT) and continued into the evening, sending plumes of smoke across the shipping channel at the commodity exporting port. The port authority said in a statement it had stopped ships from docking at a terminal operated by Santos Brasil next to Localfrio's Alfandegado terminal because of smoke, but otherwise the port was operating normally. Santos Brasil also said its operations were stopped indefinitely.

Rear Admiral Mark “Buz” Buzby, commander of the Military Sealift Command, sat with Maritime Reporter contributing editor Edward Lundquist talked with a week before his retirement aboard USNS Spearhead (JHSV 1) at Little Creek, Virginia, on May 10, 2013. The talk centered on a unique event in maritime history. MSC had seven ships in the area east of Japan, responding to the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami that killed 19,000 people. One of them was the fast combat support ship USNS Bridge (T-AOE 10)…

At Sea (NNS) -- Crew members aboard USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) donned gas masks and chemical protection suits to treat mock mass casualties during a series of chemical, biological and radiological (CBR) defense drills recently. The drills are consistent with the normal basic-phase training routine ships go through to prepare for deployment, but according to ship Operations Officer Cmdr. Paul Shock, Bonhomme Richard is going through the training a lot sooner than most. "Normally, (ships) would start this training three months after a PMA (planned maintenance availability), and it would last about five months,” said Shock. In order to achieve these goals…