At about 6:10 p.m. May 6, 2021, a tremendous amount of pressure surged through piping at the Navy’s Red Hill underground fuel facility, rupturing two joints and blowing off a 500-pound, 6-foot section of pipe. About 20,000 gallons of fuel came gushing out. The fuel eventually would come to contaminate the Navy’s drinking water system in November, sickening hundreds of military families.
That much has been confirmed by the Navy’s investigation into the water contamination, released June 30. But a Navy document provided to the
Honolulu Star-Advertiser shows that on the morning of May 6, hours before the spill, a constant barrage of alarms began going off within Red Hill’s Automated Fuel Handling Equipment program, an inventory control system used by the Navy to track fuel in real time and detect leaks.
The alarms began at around 7 a.m., according to the May 6 AFHE alarm log, around the time that Red Hill workers began transferring fuel from Red Hill tanks, and persisted throughout the day. In addition to lower-level “notification” and “warning” alarms, the system logged dozens of “critical” alarms, beginning as early as 7:26 a.m.
The log is heavily redacted. While it includes the time stamp of the alarms and their priority level, the Navy classified the descriptions of the alarms as “security information.” The state Department of Health, which has regulatory authority over the facility, said that it had received an unredacted copy of the log but that it could not release it publicly under federal law because of the Navy’s classification.
However, DOH says that the log sheds light on the events that led up to the May 6 spill — information that is pertinent to ensuring that the Red Hill facility is safely drained and shut down, per orders from the Pentagon.
“We believe that all documents related to defueling and decommissioning should be made public,” said DOH spokeswoman Kaitlin Arita-Chang. “This document is pertinent in that it helps to tell the story of what happened during the May 6 pressure surge event. DOH is focused on ensuring that defueling occurs safely, and part of that evaluation includes examining (a contractor’s) recommendations, several of which centered around avoiding another pressure surge.”
DOH did say that the alarms can relate to the valves, tanks, pumps or network communication.
The Navy has refused to explain the alarms or make someone available for an interview.
On July 22 the Navy provided a breakdown of the different levels of alarms, saying that the “critical alarms” that are listed on the log are the “highest priority” and require immediate action that can lead to area or systemwide shutdowns.
The Navy subsequently told the newspaper that the information it provided was inaccurate, but then never identified what was not correct. A week later, on July 29, the Navy provided responses to follow-up questions. But those responses provided little information. The Navy either said that it could not comment on redacted information or referred the Star-Advertiser back to its June 30 investigation.
Shortly before this story ran, the Navy said that those responses were also incorrect and got misconstrued as they made their way through various levels in the chain of command. “During the review, inaccurate assumptions were made about the nature of the alarms involved, which lead to us providing you with equally inaccurate responses,” said Navy spokesman Mike Andrews.
Andrews said that the Navy is still trying to get correct answers to such questions as what the alarms pertained to and whether the alarms related to the May 6 spill.
Hawaii Sierra Club attorney David Kimo Frankel passed the redacted AFHE log on to the Star-Advertiser in July, saying it was among documents received from DOH in response to public-records requests. Frankel called the Navy’s responses to questions about the log “infuriating.”
“That kind of attitude is what got us in this mess to begin with. ‘Don’t ask any questions. We’ll tell you what is important. Trust us,’” said Frankel.
