Almost 400 gallons of high-expansion foam flooded a United States Coast Guard hangar at the Aviation Training Center in Mobile, Alabama. According to Lt. Earl Roberts of the Mobile Aviation Training Center, acting as the Public Relations Officer, the malfunctioning of the system was the cause of the incident, which left the crew members in shock.
It all began when one of the crew members exited hangar two to enter another one, but upon returning, “The alarms in hangar two were going off, the high expansion foam system had been activated, and it was filling the building pretty quickly.” “Still cleaning up, by the time we are done with the inspections and everything, it will probably last us till the end of the week,” Lt. Roberts noted.
Lt. Roberts was working the night of the fire and remembered being in a daze. “I was just chillin’ over there watching some Netflix,” he said, pointing to the barracks on the other side of the base. He got a frantic call at about 6:45 p.m. for all hands on deck at hangar two. “I’ll be honest, I was pretty surprised at how large that mess was,” he admitted.
The high-expansion foam system was supposed to turn on when the fire alarm sounded or when a button on the wall was activated. Neither of those things happened Sunday night, when there was no fire or emergency. Lt. Roberts said they do believe it was a fault in the system that inadvertently turned on the foam.
The incident had inside the hangar three HC-144 Ocean Sentry airplanes and four MH-60 Jayhawk helicopters. According to Lt. Roberts, the aircraft were not a total loss. Multiple inspections will be done for the full extent of the damage. “We are going through inspections right now. There are multiple inspections we have to do on each aircraft to kind of assess how much damage was done,” he said.
Fortunately, no one was inside the hangar at the time of the incident, thus ensuring there were no injuries. Members of the Coast Guard team are still working on cleaning up the foam and inspecting the aircraft, said Pane, in hopes of resolving the situation by the end of the week.