SAN DIEGO –
Southwest Regional Maintenance Center (SWRMC) worked with USS Essex (LHD 2) to prepare for the ship's Damage Control Material Assessment (DCMA) from Feb. 13 - March 3 and March 20 - 24, and with the assistance of the SWRMC Sailors, USS Essex was able to complete DCMA Feb. 24 and Light-Off Assessment (LOA) March 29 in preparation for sea trials in early May.
SWRMC Sailors helped complete a walkthrough of the engineering spaces to identify and troubleshoot and repair discrepancies. SWRMC Sailors and USS Essex's crew worked side-by-side to prepare for the DCMA, a critical assessment during the ship's maintenance availability required prior to conducting LOA. During DCMA, all safety features related to damage control and firefighting equipment are inspected.
"SWRMC's Sailors provided outstanding, top-notch support to the ship's crew onboard the Essex," said USS Essex's Command Master Chief Gabriel Sinner. "In addition to the technical support provided, Petty Officer First Class Paul Kelly, an interior communication electrician, and his team provided training to ships' force junior interior communications electricians onboard."
SWRMC's assembled team provide critical assistance, identifying and repairing electrical and interior communication issues throughout the engineering spaces, and remedied several additional issues. The assist both prepped the ship for its assessment and trained the ship's crew to ensure they are capable of repairing casualties in the future.
Combat Systems Product Family manager, Matt Hutnick, said, "The experience and technical expertise of our SWRMC Sailors was vital to their ability to work through a myriad of electrical and interior communications issues onboard Essex. Additionally, the hands-on training they provided USS Essex Sailors will ensure these fleet technicians are prepared to address similar issues while out to sea due to their increased rating and equipment level of knowledge. Our Sailors put together a team to go out there and they, outside of their normal scope of work, devoted four weeks to preparing to get the ship inspection ready."
One of SWRMC's significant accomplishments with the USS Essex repairs was Parasense upgrade, a refrigerant leak monitor system.
"IC2 Morris inspected the system and identified an outdated system and took steps to replace it with a new updated NAVSEA detection system," said Interior Communications Senior Chief (ICCS) Roberto Valadez, the combat systems product family's leading chief at SWRMC. "IC2 Morris discussed this discrepancy with the SWRMC chain of command, provided the casualty reports, drafted the messages, letting everyone know - hey, we need to get this piece of equipment up to date. The good thing is that the ship was able to acquire and install the new and improved monitoring systems."
As a result, all seven monitoring systems were up and running for inspection.
Other critical repairs included restoration of the haylon fire-fighting system; repairs to the sound powered communication systems and to damage control (DC) central working alarm panels that monitor flooding, fire, sprinkler, and intrusion alarms throughout the ship. The team also made repairs to the distribution panel that restored lights in the repair lockers.
Valadez attributed the success of the Sailors to their SWRMC training, past experience across various ships' platforms, as well as past experience on a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship.
"They came onboard knowing the ins and outs of the ship and systems," said Valadez. "A lot of these problems they had encountered before, so they knew where the problems might be and how to fix them. "
The SWRMC Sailors' work on Essex is part of SWMRC's mission to provide superior ship maintenance, modernization, technical support, and training for the Navy's Pacific Fleet.
For more information on SWRMC please visit http://www.swrmc.navy.mil/.
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