Navy Stands Down to Study Its Accidents

WASHINGTON —  The U.S. Navy has decided to sharply curtail aircraft flights and warship movements for 48 hours to study safety procedures after a recent series of accidents around the world, defense officials said today.

“It is a safety stand-down. They will look at their procedures to see if something more can be done for safety,” said one of the officials, who asked not to be identified.

In the latest in a string of incidents, at least 13 sailors and shipyard workers were injured in Norfolk, Va., today in a fire aboard the helicopter landing ship Inchon, the seventh accident involving a U.S. warship since Oct. 11.

Both Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Navy officials said earlier that the accidents, which included U.S. ships and aircraft firing at or bombing one another, showed no pattern.

But some experts have called for a close look at safety procedures as the random accidents have mounted.

One sailor was in serious condition and another in guarded condition at hospitals in Norfolk after the brief morning fire aboard the Inchon, which was docked at a shipyard for routine maintenance, according to Navy Lt. Cmdr. Steve Burnett.

“It was apparently an electrical fire. As far as we can determine, there were no other serious injuries,” Burnett said. He said the fire in a power distribution room on the hangar deck of the Inchon was quelled shortly after it broke out at 9:30 a.m.

Seven people have been killed or lost at sea and 16 injured in the string of accidents, which included a collision between a destroyer and a merchant ship off Malaysia on Sunday and the crash of a jet on a carrier Oct. 29.