USS George Washington (CVN-73) Yokosuka, Japan –
The flames crackled and hissed in front of Logistics Specialist 3rd Class Alex Tetrault, spitting sparks and radiating heat that pressed against her fire-retardant coveralls. Cool air flowed steadily through her mask as she traced the nozzle in a practiced “figure eight,” feeling the hose surge with high-pressure water. It was a far cry from her usual routine aboard USS George Washington (CVN 73), where she spent her days reviewing order numbers and managing stock control in the supply department.
When she joined the Navy, Tetrault never imagined she would be responsible for extinguishing a fire on the flight deck. That changed a month earlier, when her supervisor had approached her about joining a team supporting vertical replenishments on the flight deck while at sea. She wasn’t afraid of the work; she was afraid of the what-ifs. She’d never been close to a helicopter before, much less hooked supplies to the bottom of one. A helicopter crash, she thought, was unlikely—but not impossible. That possibility became real the moment she stepped into the Surface Warfare School Command (SWSC) classroom.
“During bootcamp, every single sailor in this room learned the basic fundamentals of shipboard firefighting techniques,” said Aviation Boatswain’s Mate 1st Class Marvin Etienne, a lead instructor at SWSC, during his classroom introduction. “I know that, for most of you, feeling the heat of a raging fire during a firefighting course was not in your cards for your time in the Navy.
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Tetrault looked up. She had wondered the same thing. Why her? Why now?
Etienne answered that question with a single image: a freeze frame of an MH‑60R Seahawk crashing onto the flight deck of USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) in 2018.
He recounted the incident with the gravity of someone who had lived it. Sailors were injured. Lives were at stake. Training mattered.
“The main assets of the Navy are you, the sailors,” he said. “The main purpose of aircraft firefighting is to save lives. Without the sailors, there is no Navy.”
Tetrault thought about Etienne’s message and realized maybe she could justify the training to herself. She wanted to be able to save lives, and she could do that by giving her all in the training that could one day lead to her doing that very thing.
Sailors feeling the heat of a fire, encountering the kick of water running through a hose and experiencing realistic aircraft firefighting training is an effective way to protect naval assets and lives and preserve mission continuity. By enhancing damage control effectiveness in the face of potential fire hazards, These types of immersive scenarios sharpen damage‑control skills in ways no classroom setting can match.
And with that, the class moved from theory to practice.
Inside the training complex at Commander, Fleet Activities Yokosuka, Etienne briefed the students as they formed a circle around him.
“You are about to actually feel the heat and see and smell the smoke of aircraft fuel,” he said. “We are the only site in Japan that burns actual JP-8 jet fuel.”
The circle of students broke into four groups; each group manned a hose with two instructors assigned to each team. Etienne positioned himself in the middle of all the teams and prepared to supervise the organized chaos that was about to unfold. He nodded at his fellow instructors in the windowed room overlooking the training complex—a signal for them to sound the alarm.
Tetrault tightened her cranial—a head and hearing protection device—and felt a flicker of nerves. But strapping it on also felt like a commitment—she was ready to face whatever came next.
A piercing alarm cut through the room. Forty sailors activated their self‑contained breathing apparatuses in unison, the hiss of air filling the space. Flames licked the underside of the training helicopter as the teams advanced.
“I saw the flames grow from a fire to an inferno underneath the training aircraft, as the sailor in front of me tested the hose agent,” Tetrault said. “Surprisingly, even though our team had never worked together, we moved towards the fiery aircraft as a unified team.”
Four streams of water hit the fire simultaneously, creating a cloud of steam and smoke that glowed orange in the reflected light.
“It looked and felt like a scene out of a movie,” she said.
Then came the moment she had been both dreading and preparing for.
When the instructor called for a nozzleman relief, Tetrault stepped forward.
“As I got closer to the inferno, the less hesitant I became. Seeing the sailors in front of me handle the hose easily gave me plenty of confidence in the training I’d just received,” she said.
Adrenaline helped too.
The heat hit her first—waves of it rolling off the flames. Sparks bounced off her coveralls. But when she moved the nozzle in that familiar “figure-eight” pattern, something shifted.
“I felt confident and in control,” she said. “Watching the flames flicker when the water I was spraying hit them was extremely satisfying. We were controlling the inferno.”
The teams cycled through until the fire finally died under the weight of the water. Just like that, the exercise was over.
“I definitely have a new respect for the importance of training in general and firefighting training on the flight deck,” Tetrault said. “Etienne drove the point home during his training and actually battling the inferno reinforced it. We have to be able to take care of a fire on the flight deck, no matter what job we are doing up there, so that we can save lives and preserve the mission.”
The next morning, she returned to her desk. It may have been the same workspace, but she had a new mindset.
Tetrault left SWSC with more than a certificate. She left with confidence, skills she never expected to need and a deeper understanding of her role in keeping her shipmates safe.
She knew she was ready for whatever the flight deck might bring.
Petty Officer 2nd Class August Clawson is a communications specialist with USS George Washington (CVN 73). 