Routine, boredom and panic: Life for a carrier crew stuck on Guam

The crew of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, nearly three weeks after being forced to dock in Guam after an outbreak of the coronavirus, is now scattered across the island, waiting to get better.

Most are holed up in hotels, houses and on the naval base. A few hundred remain on board to maintain the ship. Seven have been hospitalized, including one who was recently moved to the intensive care unit for increased observation because of shortness of breath.

The sailors free of coronavirus will move back on board the Roosevelt once it has been declared “clean,” which the Navy estimates will be April 20-25, according to a reembarkation plan obtained by POLITICO.

Across the board, sailors described several weeks of chaos, during which tempers flared and disinformation ran rampant. Life has now settled into monotony, punctuated by periods of panic as the Navy wrestles with the unprecedented outbreak. As of Friday, 94 percent of the crew had been tested, with 660 positive and 3,920 negative. One sailor, Aviation Ordnanceman Chief Petty Officer Charles Thacker Jr., has died.

POLITICO spoke with more than half a dozen sailors, family and friends for this article, all of whom requested anonymity for fear of repercussions from the Navy. Several sailors and family members said they had received explicit instructions from the Navy — which one spouse described as “threatening” — not to speak with the media.

Their stories paint a picture of a carrier crew frozen in time, forced to wait out the disease on a dot in the Pacific Ocean — and at the center of a swirling political scandal back home.

Gym life

For the 300 or so Roosevelt sailors packed into a base gymnasium on the island, quarantine has been oddly like a vacation.

They spend long hours playing the new Final Fantasy VII for PlayStation 4, which took days to download over the gym’s spotty Internet connection. They read and work out. One day last week, they ordered pizza from Domino's.

But every so often, reality comes crashing down. All of the sailors in the gym have tested positive for Covid-19. While most are experiencing only mild symptoms, such as headaches, a cough or muscle pain, a few are much sicker.

In the gym, crew members are on high alert. Last week, the authorities called an ambulance for a sailor with asthma who worried he wasn’t getting enough oxygen, one sailor said. The paramedics checked the asthmatic man’s vitals before returning him to his cot, where he now sleeps just a few yards from a makeshift medical office in a corner of the gymnasium.

“His inhaler doesn’t quite clear him up,” the sailor said. "They wanted to make sure he was breathing correctly.”

Aside from that incident, life has settled into a daily routine. The crew members have plenty of water, and line up for medical checks twice daily. Food is carefully rationed and not always appetizing, but at least they are off the ship.

Sailors across the island are allowed to use their phones and other electronic devices during their isolation period, Navy spokeswoman Lt. j.g. Rachel McMarr said. Most sailors on base have access to the internet, she said. In addition to treatment by Navy medical professionals, the crew also has virtual access to their chaplain team, a civilian resiliency counselor and psychiatric care.

But the biggest problem is the lack of reliable information about the status of the ship or the outside world, the sailor said.

“It’s not terrible, honestly. We could be on a boat,” the sailor said. “It’s just frustrating because we have no idea what’s going on.”

Support for the skipper

After reports of the first Covid-19 cases on board the ship emerged last month, a second sailor described feeling helpless and scared. The staff began bleaching the ship two or three times a day, sometimes spending two hours cleaning. Rumors flew: One minute, sailors were told they were all going to be flown to Japan; within five minutes, that plan was apparently "canned," the sailor said.

“It was scary because it felt like nobody was taking action, and we were stuck on the ship like sardines,” the sailor said. “No leaders were stepping up to tell us what was going on.”

The crew became more hopeful after the ship’s commanding officer, Capt. Brett Crozier, sent a memo to Navy leadership requesting additional help. The memo was leaked to the media, setting off a roller coaster chain of events that ended with Crozier getting fired and acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly stepping down over his own remarks to the crew.

The first sailor listened to Modly’s speech over the public address system, during which he cursed repeatedly, berated the crew and called Crozier “naive” and “stupid.”

“That was probably one of the most unprofessional speeches I’ve ever heard,” the sailor said.

The crew and their families have overwhelmingly supported Crozier, who the second sailor said “always put us first.” Videos posted of his last moments on the ship showed sailors cheering, chanting his name and swarming to say goodbye.

“Do I think he leaked that letter to the San Francisco Chronicle? I’m not sure. But we all sure as hell hope he did,” said the second sailor. “All he was trying to do was not have a death on his hands because the Navy was downplaying how bad this was.”

The Navy last week completed an investigation into the incident; leadership has not yet ruled out reinstating Crozier.

Boredom and then panic

While the Pentagon reeled from the Navy's leadership changes, the Roosevelt’s chain of command was still figuring out logistics. Healthy people were finally moved out of a crowded gym into appropriate housing. The second sailor moved directly from the ship to a hotel, where crewmembers were allowed to open their doors only to grab their meals three times a day. The lucky ones were able to wave to one another from their balconies.

But for some, boredom soon turned to panic. The second sailor began experiencing Covid-19-like symptoms, which got worse over the course of five days. The person left the hotel to go into isolation elsewhere.

For others, quarantine is a waiting game. It's not clear when the isolation period will be over; after the 14-day quarantine, sailors must still wait up to 48 hours to receive their test results. And some in the gym speculate that after they have finished 14 days in that location, those who test negative may be moved to hotels for another period of isolation.

In the meantime, crew members have gone to great lengths to ease the monotony. A third sailor who is in a hotel room tried to dye a hard-boiled egg with a tide pod. A friend curled her hair with tampons, the sailor said. Someone set up a Facebook page for people to post their workout hacks.

“We all do weird stuff you wouldn’t think of because of how bored we are,” the third sailor said.

Until Tuesday, the crew was unable to get mail from their families, according to a spouse of a fourth sailor assigned to the Roosevelt. Now, care packages — containing toothpaste, deodorant, laundry pods and ramen, for example — are finally arriving. After hours on the phone with cellphone service providers, the spouse was able to get free data for the crew members, who can now FaceTime and text their families without worrying about the bill.

Sailors are being provided toiletries, as well as a catalog from the Navy Exchange they can use to order additional items, McMarr said.

The fourth sailor has been tested four times so far, but is still healthy despite being forced to isolate with Covid-positive crew members when the ship pulled into Guam on March 27. The sailor’s food is also being rationed, although the spouse said service members are used to that kind of hardship.

“It was just a piece of bread and one scrambled egg and one water bottle,” the spouse said. “The next day he got an MRE [Meal, Ready-to-Eat], and he was so grateful for the MRE.”

In between sparse meals and frequent calls to check up on his division, there are some lighter moments.

“I forced him to watch ‘Tiger King,’” said the spouse, referring to the buzzy Netflix documentary about exotic animal owners. The two watched episodes together virtually.

“It got our minds off the hectic situation,” the spouse said.

'Bleach-a-palooza'

While most of the crew remains in isolation or quarantine on the island, the few sailors who remain on board are cleaning the ship yet again. Capt. Dan Keeler, the ship's executive officer, has built a command center in the XO's conference room, the Navy said in a statement.

Sanitizing the Roosevelt involves a "roving cleaning team" that is constantly moving throughout the ship. Each day begins and ends with what sailors have dubbed "bleach-a-palooza." The officer in charge of the cleaning task force is Cmdr. Chad Hollinger, the ship's weapons officer, whom the crew has taken to calling "Mr. Clean."

During the cleaning period, certain spaces are isolated for seven days — four days longer than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends, McMarr said. Continuously manned spaces will be cleaned twice: Once by the off-going crew, and again by the oncoming crew after the quarantine, she said.

"We think of this as similar to painting our way out of a room — the ship will be cleaned space-by-space and access to each space will be closed off," McMarr said. "The final spaces cleaned will be at the ship exit points."

In spaces without large machinery or electrical equipment, the cleaning team is using large area sprayers that can cover a large space, such as a mess deck, in a third of the time it would take to do by hand. As of Thursday, the team had cleaned over 80 percent of the ship.

"It hasn't been easy; it's hard work, but we are fighting through it," Hollinger said. "There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and we are going to get there."