By Thursday morning, the smoke had long since lifted from HMCS Toronto, clearing the deck for the christening of the new Canadian Forces Base jetty on the Halifax waterfront.
Maj. Mark Gough, public affairs officer for Maritime Forces Atlantic, said the cause of the Wedensday evening fire on the navy frigate is still unknown.
“The ship’s company started the initial investigation last night,” Gough said Thursday.
Engineers from the base’s Fleet Maintenance Facility Cape Scott were sent out to do an initial analysis, he said.
“Right now, we don’t know what the cause of the fire is,” Gough said. “The ship isn’t going anywhere in the next few weeks so we’ll investigate to see what happened and remedy the problem as required.
“It might be a simple issue, it might be complex. The best way to explain it is that a ship is a complex system of complex systems. When you have a floating mini-town, it’s got all these different moving parts, all these systems that are working together, so it might be something that requires a bit more time to figure out.”
The 134-metre-long frigate and its more than 200 crew members returned to the CFB Halifax dockyard nearly three weeks ago after its six-month Operation Reassurance deployment in support of an international security mission in the Adriatic, Black and Mediterranean seas.
Smoke could be seen puffing from the starboard funnel Wednesday evening. The fire was reported at 6:54 p.m., and the frigate’s crew and the base fire department had the blaze extinguished within 15 minutes. There were no injuries and the extent of the damage has not been determined, Gough said.
Gough described the starboard funnel as one of the ship’s exhausts.
“It’s two-thirds of the way to the back of the ship,” he said. “It’s just an exhaust on one side of the ship.”
Gough said the frigate is under a routine maintenance program.
“It’s just like every 5,000 kilometres you drive your car, you have to get it in for an oil change. When we have our ships deployed for an extended period of time, this is an enhanced routine mainteance that we do every time a ship comes back.”
There weren’t any lingering smells or other visible effects from the fire Thursday morning on the Toronto as Bernadette Jordan, minister of rural economic development and MP for South Shore-St. Margarets, announced the completion of the $112-million Jetty NJ project. The 247-metre-long jetty that runs parallel to Barrington Street is larger and more structurally sound that the previous one, Jordan said.
“I’m lucky to have a front-row seat of the cababilities of our navy here in Nova Scotia,” Jordan said. “I know that your tasks are almost as enormous as the coastline that you help to protect, the longest in the world, spanning three oceans and over 200,000 kilometres, making the Royal Canadian Navy absolutely essential for the defence and security of our country.
“Whether at home or abroad you stand ready to support Canadians and our allies at all times. In turn, our government stands firm in our commitment to support you.”
The new jetty, she said, is part of the required infrastructure and equipment the navy requires to remain flexible enough to conduct its missions.The jetty project, which created 400 jobs in the surrounding region during its construction, will provide berthing space for four Arctic and offshore patrol ships as well as other naval ships and foreign vessels.
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