MSC training centers more than just fire schools

By Rosemary Heiss
MSC Public Affairs

Students work together to repair a hole in the bulkhead of this mock ship. During Damage Control class, center staff members open various holes in the wet trainer's space, and students are challenged to repair the leaks and stop the water before the ship sinks. Joe Cobb, photos

The acrid smell and dark clouds of smoke precede the imminent danger of fire. Such flames are threatening on land but almost certainly perilous at sea.

As a result, seafarers have been trained to fight fires for years. Military Sealift Command — and its predecessor Military Sea Transportation Service — has operated fire schools for its mariners since the early 1950s.

The first school, established in San Francisco, moved to San Diego in 1996, while the second school was launched in Earle, N.J., in 1975.

Since then, the schools have taken on a much broader mission and have aptly been renamed ‘training centers.'

The centers are responsible for all safety training for MSC civil service and civilian mariners.

Though the centers' missions expanded long ago, they are still most commonly known as fire schools. In fact, Dan Hawley, director of the West Coast Training Center in San Diego, said that's all most people recognize.

"If I answer my phone ‘training center,' people hang up because they think they have the wrong number," he said. Less than 25 percent of the courses offered now are for shipboard firefighting. The remaining courses include training in small arms, anti-terrorism, marine environmental programs, first aid, water survival, able seaman upgrade and more than 10 other courses.

The West Coast Training Center teaches students how to survive in the water during Proficiency in Survival Craft training.

The centers, which have students from all experience levels and walks of maritime life, train their students to International Maritime Organization standards – a level of proficiency required by the U.S. Coast Guard, said Bob Farmer, director of MSC's East Coast Training Center.

The standards are higher than the ones set for the combatant Navy and take about twice as long to complete, according to Farmer, because of MSC's unique missions.

"The additional training is deemed critical for the safe operation of all MSC ships worldwide," said Hawley.

More than 7,000 students graduate from the centers' courses each year.

With 19 instructors, the East Coast Training Center is almost twice the size of the nine-instructor West Coast center. The size difference is intentional, said Farmer, whose East Coast center has the responsibility of training every new MSC mariner.

After new mariners attend a oneweek MSC orientation at Military Sealift Fleet Support Command in Norfolk, Va., they head to New Jersey for two to eight weeks of training, Farmer said. New students who cannot be accommodated by the East Coast center go to the West Coast center.

The San Diego-based center provides coursework not only for MSC mariners but also for uniformed Navy sailors from the U.S. Navy fire school next door. Courses there provide extensive refresher and upgrade training.

The bestknown portion of the centers ' mission requires students to face the flames.

Three to four weeks is the average length of training for MSC mariners, but those who will go to the deck department – able seamen and ordinary seamen – usually stay for six to eight weeks to complete additional training requirements, including two weeks of ordnance-handling instruction.

Students, like Navy Senior Chief Hull Maintenance Technician David Bryhan, benefit from the center's education because it prepares him to go wherever MSC needs him, worldwide – unrestricted by a lack of Navy or Coast Guard qualifications.

After 25 years of uniformed Navy service, Bryhan is joining the MSC civil service mariners' ranks and is completing the command's training requirements at the West Coast Training Center while still on active duty.

He took many of the required courses earlier in his Navy career, and the training center provided the required refresher training that will allow him to continue life at sea after his retirement, which he scheduled around the center's training, he said.

"I've always enjoyed sea duty, and joining MSC will allow me to continue to do what I love," he said. "I'm not sure where my first assignment will be, but I'm looking forward to joining the MSC team."

Staff writer James Jackson, SEALOGPAC Public Affairs contributed to this article.