A Joke

"Doc, I wake up in a cold sweat having dreamt about tee pees and wigwams."  The doctor said, "You are too tense."

For Lack of a Better Idea

I had to get the name of GE's CEO off my blog.  It was polluting space.  To add insult to injury it seems my favorite transportation company is thinking about bringing its intermodal hub to Fayettenam.  There was a lengthy editorial in the Fayetteville Observer about how great of an idea this is.  Jobs it seems.  Construction jobs to build the place.  The writer loathes the term "Fayettenam."  Not sure why, because it is accurate.  He says that the entire  town (because Fayetteville is not really a city) relies upon the military's dollars.  The military have nothing to do with Momentum Foods, DAK Americas, DuPont, Cargill, and Goodyear.  Those plants are not reliant upon the military in any way, and often I think how they contribute to the local economy.  Someone works at these places, but rarely do we read about their services.  It is like they are invisible.  CSX-T may be the most visible of all industry in Fayettenam, because they service the U.S. military.  That is not well publicized either, their relationship with Fort Bragg.  I have surmised they haul aviation fuel out to the post pretty regularly.  They do this at night under the cover of darkness.  They are very stealth about the process, but I know the sound of the locomotive horn that pulls these tanker cars.  It is offensive, but then again a train horn should and is meant to be offensive.  It says, "Get the hell out of the way.  A train is coming."  Rail accidents have been in the news recently, because an Amtrack train slammed into a backhoe killing two workers.  It seems the "system" that is supposed to be installed on trains to keep them from colliding is not fully implemented or failsafe.  Why do they really need this anyway?  Isn't that the job of the railroad to handle traffic like the aviation industry?  I would think that huge control room in Jacksonville would be lit up like a Christmas tree.  Oh, Amtrack we are talking about, a government owned entity.  Pass the buck.  I still am waiting to hear why the Amtrack engineer had his train going over a 100 m.p.h. when it derailed killing quite a few people.  Bueller?  The world is not a nice place, and living in the Carolinas is becoming more embarrassing.  If the Boss cancels a concert here for political reasons, well.....  It's a shite state of affairs.  My sentiments about CSX-T building an intermodal hub here?  It was not that long ago the irresponsible government of Fayetteville sanctioned and paid for a rail traffic study.  I have read it.  They suggested Fort Bragg or rather CSX-T build a connector, so that two mile long 450 car military trains would not block downtown traffic.  Nada.  The spur those trains back into is a hideous nightmare.  Rotten ties, spikes hanging akimbo, and rails like the Swamp Fox roller coaster.  Who could a massively loaded military train meant to defend the sanctity of the United States possible rely upon that trackage?  Bueller?  The community is ignorant of the intrusion of rail traffic, except for Kim Hasty.  When she and her judge purchased their new home, little did they know 25 freight trains pass through downtown each day.  I know, because my left ear rings when a train is nearby.  Tinnitus is caused by low frequency sound if you have some hearing loss.  The frequencies that ring are the ones you are missing for some reason.  My left ear tinnitus is like a spidey sense.  It never fails me.  I am listening to it cycle at the moment on and off as a huge freight train is assembled.  This happens nonstop for the most part.  Occasionally we get a break, and it is like bliss.  Bliss on tap.  My ears don't ring, there is no low frequency pressure, and Fayetteville feels like it did before the onset of AC traction.  It feels good.  Because Fayettenam all ready has been sacrificed to the railroad gods, what is the harm in building yet another heavily trafficked rail yard nearby?  People murder each other daily, and no one knows why.  Why do you feel shitty?  Bring it, but soon enough eminent domain will be overturned by an honest and diligent congress and the Supreme Court will rule that the government cannot take your property for private gain.  Trump was a part of this legislation, and as the months unfold no one is qualified to be president.  I am glad the media is doing a better job about exposing the hyperbole and rhetoric and letting Americans fight it out in true American form.  Duke students protested for eight days demanding the firing of some high ranking administrators for racial bias.  Party on, Garth. 

What is Multitonality?

In a nutshell the squirrels ate some of my Hostas.  Some of them survived and are poking out of the ground.  (I really wish Mac would drive his pimped up ride somewhere else for the evening)  Instead my head continues to spin as my open window directly faces the Milan Yard.  Our house is the only two-story dwelling on this side of the street whose upstairs windows face Milanity.  (Of course I mean the Milan Yard)  I don't know why CSX-T calls it the Milan Yard.  Rest assuredly there is no vague similarity to Milan.  I have been to Italy more than once, and your ears don't ring from rampant tinnitus caused by infrasound, another term American ignores.  Instead we sell you hearing aids at a 1000% mark up.  Seaboard Coastline came first.  Atlantic Coastline came first.  John Snow so fit to fuse the Chessie System with Seaboard hence CS.  X was their term for "whatever."  T stands for transportation.  This company has revolutionized container shipping.  Logistics and inter modality are a part of their corporate lingo.  They put stuff in big metal boxes, and then transfer them from ship to truck to rail, or rail to truck to ship, or truck to ship to rail.  You know they have built a railroad in Iraq, or Syria, or somewhere over there.  They have built a gas station too, and it cost the American taxpayers a pocket full of kryptonite.  (I mean coin)  I hope UNC wins tomorrow night.  I don't hate the squirrels for eating my host bulbs. There are a few plants left that are healthy and sprouting.  (I need to take a shower, but my funk is abstractly pleasing)  Multitonality is a harmonic system that embraces all the sonority of all twelve keys equally.  It is tonal, but it "in" all twelve keys at the same time.  Therefore you cannot analyze the music with a key signature.  You can use harmonic analysis, and it is the best way to study the music.  Chord symbols are not just efficient for jazz.  I have created a body of piano music, over eighty works, many of which are the length of sonatas, for a grand tee total of a Mercedes Convertible.  "Give that man a prize! I put it to you Greg.  My friends are crazy.  They are losing their minds."  Multitonality.  These pieces embody the emotion and intimacy of jazz and the eloquence and restraint of classical.  The melodies will prove timeless and will last as long as learned society exists.  These melodies will become America's newest Great American Songbook, if allowed.  You would not listen to a piano work by Anton Webern, but you would listen to a work by Paul Reichle lll.  This is my revenant.  This is my country. (but not really, because America sucks)  It's not really my revenant, but I wanted to mention that frightful mockery of a movie purchased by Leonardo DeCrappio.  I like Leo's work wholeheartedly.  I don't like The Revenant.  I like Birdman, and I was elated finally to see it.  It is a far cry from The Irrelevant.  Anyway, I have no vehicle for this piano music.  America is not sophisticated enough to acknowledge the Gershwin brothers.  We have taught our yute about Miley Cyrus, Tayor Shaft, and ?  

Mac the Engineer

So Mac is outside my house again.  He pulled up about 9:40 p.m. while I was napping on my bed.  (I always am waiting for the mafia to show up and riddle my house with bullets)  My neighbors get expensive convertible Mercedes for their anniversaries.  I blow my yard.  That is something the Sortopotamus would be good at, blowing my yard.  I need to get in touch with him about that.  Blowing my yard.  (I crack myself up, or rather I am cracking up)  So Mac is sitting off in the near distance.  Evidently no one else knows this except me, but they do.  They will not talk about it.  They will not accept that is it true.  I am learning this is because of Southern pride.  It's a survival instinct.  "We protects what is ours, the South."  I reckon.  I tend to call a turd a turd when I smell it, and this one is a big fat turd.  Mac in most probability has moved on home, and his big pimped-up ride is sitting on the tracks waiting for the next "shift."  Our federal boys do see fit to regulate the amount of hours a driver can steer a prime mover, but it isn't effective.  You can read about these foibles on online forums.  It is a huge weakness in the Rail Industry, another boring institution that no one seems to take interest in, but it controls our lives.  They are savvy.  They are stealth.  They are irresponsible.  They are the epitome of Southern survival.  I had a Norfolk/Southern engineer fire a pistol at me once, when I was photographing his "consist" late at night in Columbus, Ohio.  I have it on tape.  I used the gunshot in a musical work I created.  His pistol shot occurs at the climax of the piece.  Bueller.  "Why would a Norfolk/Southern engineer fire a pistol out of his cab."  Bueller.  "Because he was afraid."  "Bueller, this was before 9/11."  "Yes sir, he was afraid, because Norfolk/Southern like CSX-T like to break the power axle rule."  Bueller.  "What is a power axle rule?"  Bueller.  "A power axles rule dictates how many diesel prime movers can be hooked together to form a "consist."  The consists I observed in Cowtown where doosies.  I chased this one in my Nissan pick up all over town.  The engineer kept pulling forward to escape my scrutiny.  Bueller.  "Why would he do that?"  Bueller.  "Because he was in violation of the power axle rule."  That meant he had too many diesel prime movers hooked together in tandem for the good of humanity, or so says them federal boys.  Too much power.  Norfolk/Southern has "too much power."  Enter Erskine Bowles.   If I remember correctly Mr. Bowles was chief of staff of the Obama administration.  Then he appointed Holden Thorp the country's youngest university chancellor.  Then academic fraud was discovered at UNC, his college.  Mr. Thorp fired the Athletic Director at the beginning of the autumn semester.  Tarheels were not happy.  Mr. Thorp stepped down with a pocket full of kryptonite.  (I mean coin.)  Holden and Patty moved to St. Louis, enrolled their daughter in boarding school, and left their son to his own devices at UNC.  We have heard nary a word from them since.  Holden, like Chris Potter, played in my band.  They were different bands, and Holden's came first.  We won the high school talents show at Terry Sanford my senior year by masquerading as the Blues Brothers.  (Also we played well for high school students)  Holden played lead and rhythm guitar.  I spoke with such a soft southern accent back in l981, I barely recognize myself.  Evidently it was appealing to one particular female student, and we had sex a lot.  (That was in high school mind you)  Not many people were sexually active back then.  I learned early.  Life sucks, so get what you can.  I have not been successful at getting a lot of money, but my net worth is the future of classical music.  Let me clarify.  I don't like to use the term "Classical Music" at all, because it is a misnomer.  Rather I would say Contemporary Classical Music.  It is a more eloquent term and also more descriptive.  In essence what people erroneously call "Classical Music" like the radio station WCPE, should be called European-based chamber and orchestral music.  Slowly at the turn of the century it came to America.  If I had to choose this would be the time I would choose to live.  To keep it short, my net worth (which is not worth much) is the future of Contemporary Classical Music.  That is because I have invented the next style of composition recognized by scholars who study learned music.  We have the Second Viennese School, like AC Traction, electromagnetic waves, or prime movers is a complete obscurity to the mainstream American populace.  Instead they gather at Louie's Sport Pub and Tiki Bar outside on a Sunday and listen to bar music by musicians dressed like the grateful dead.  It is a bit like Halloween.  They get to play dress up, get drunk, and hoot and holler.  This is not the way I choose to spend my Sunday afternoon, because it is a waste of time.  There are no jobs, because the jobs that formed the core of middle class America were in manufacturing.  "Daddy is going to the plant."  They made things at the plant.  Important things happened at the plant.  Where are the plants now?  If I did go to Louie's Sports Bar, nothing would happen.  Maybe I might enjoy the music, but it wouldn't matter.  Things are set in stone in the South, boy.  Things have been the same way forever, and this is the way we like it.  What about the jobs we once had to keep the South alive?  What about the rampant poverty that has gripped rural North and South Carolina?  Ask the folks at Sierra Nevada Corporation what they think about that.  They are too busy building air terminals that float.  Not much helping the impoverished in the Carolinas.  They are helping the MOTSU ball.  It's all about the MOTSU ball that created ISIS.  

M.O.T.S.O Balls, Oye Ve!

What is a MOTSO ball?  It is a military container shipping terminal gleefully hauling munitions to Kuwait and Iraq.  (Are we still doing this?  Are we still doing this?)  We did this in l990, when I became clinically depressed.  (What is clinical depression?)  Being depressed in a clinic?  That's ludicrous, just like the rest of modern America.  We did this in l990.  Anyone remember why?  The televised war?  Bueller?  The first time we watched war unfold on our TVs.  We watched the American military descend on Kuwait and immediately become the catalyst for a full surrender of the Iraqi army.  They laid down their arms and said, "Whoa poppy.  Like we give up."  What is a MOTSO ball?  The MOTSO ball singlehandedly enabled the movement of the American military over the Atlantic with merchant ships full of munitions.  It worked. Saddam Hussein was surprised, and ultimately ended up living in an underground gutter with a goat.  I don't know about the goat, but they strung him up like a sacrificial Negro and hanged him until death.  It wasn't over.  After failing to inspire the Iraqi military to live up to the grandeur and might of the American military, they surrendered again, laid down their arms, and open the flood gates for ISIS to occupy our fighting machines.  WAs the MOTSO ball successful?  It was not created until after World War ll, of which if I remember correctly we won by dropping bombs on Japan.  We didn't win the Viet Nam War, but it cluttered my adolescence with ten years of bloody murder also which was televised.  If you can't tell I am not a fan of the MOTSO ball.  When the MOTSO ball gets spinning "war trains" with "AC Traction" get rolling continuously from Fort Bragg to Sunny Point.  I remember it now.  I moved back from Columbia, South Carolina to Fayettenam, and I was depressed.  Why?  The answer is the same reason I am depressed now.  "War trains" with "AC Traction" rolling continuously from Fort Bragg to Sunny Point.  I didn't choose it.  I didn't choose to live in this state or this town, a town that unravels at the seams when spring comes.  UNC may win the NCAA national title, and that would be good.  Even if UNC committed academic fraud to enable athletes to qualify for college play time, still it would be good.  The money that is pouring in to UNC surely will be used to build more athletic facilities, like an indoor training facility for their football team.  Rah rah Tarheels.  Meanwhile colleges and university still are offering worthless degrees with fancy names, the the American economy supports none of them.  It is a recurring theme with me, but it is true, just like "AC Traction" is a dangerous thing despite its 47% adhesion.  So there is this huge prime mover.  Bueller?  "What is a prime mover?"  Bueller.  "A prime mover is an interest rate based upon the work ethic of a mover and shaker."  "Bueller, what is a Shaker?"  Bueller.  "A Shaker is a puritan American founder who finds tranquility by exorcising demons from their body by shaking them out."  "That is correct, Bueller.  Bueller, What is a prime mover?"  A prime mover is a huge, elephantine, colossal turbo-charged diesel engine, usually twelve cylinders, that is mobile on bogies that nowadays are steered radially.  They have dynamic braking, power inverters, and other amenities that salvage the conductor and engineer from death by electrocution.  This consists of wearing lead boots, Gortex insulating jumpsuits, Depends, and carbon gloves so the residual electricity instead of going into them goes into our power grid robbing it of its efficiency.  The conductor and engineer operate efficiently, but our local power grid like a sacrificial lamb, oozes its amperage into the air.  (This is a bonafide property of an electromagnetic wave, a nonexistent, non recognized, property of the aesthetic of physics, a bonafide scientific discipline.)  We don't hear about these much anymore here in America.  Instead we hear about mobile apps., which run on electromagnetic waves.  Just like AC Traction no one is much interested in either.  They're just some invisible thing that balanced the federal budget when Bill Clinton was getting head from Monical Lewinsky.  (I hope I spelled her name correctly.)  So if I live here in America, host to the MOTSO ball and Fort Bragg, Cherry Point, and Camp Lejune why don't I read about them?  Why don't we read about anything of value to our employment in America.  "I ask you Greg, what are the employers in America?  Is it too much to ask to know what the available jobs are?  Shouldn't there be a huge list that tells the country, the tax payer, what their jobs prospects are?"  Maybe there is.  Usually it is called a Chamber of Commerce.  I learned that term from Janet Beard, a lawyer who became Janet Thoren when she married.  The term Chamger of Commerce she discovered in the fifth grade during a social studies project.  I reckon any smart lawyer has a notion of what jobs are available in America, but I don't.  It used to be a matter of public interest.  We needed to know what the jobs were, so we could fight for them.  Why would we need to fight for jobs, when we are a Capitalist country?  It seems "a private means of ownership" likes to hire cheap labor, labor that would not be considered middle class.  The middle class has to fight for these jobs and hence their wages and benefits.  Does this sound familiar? There were these things called "Labor Unions" that organized and fought for the employed worked force.  Labor Unions were good.  MOTSO balls not so good, for us that is.  (to be continued...)

Learn It, Live It, Love It, Spicoli. "Hey Dude. What's MOTSU?"

Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point [MOTSU]
Southport, N.C.

The Sunny Point facility is operated by the 597th Transportation Group, on a 16,000-acre, Army-owned site. The facility, opened in 1955, is the key ammunition shipping point on the Atlantic Coast for the Department of Defense. The huge Sunny Point installation, located along N.C. Highway 133, was built with a large undeveloped buffer zone and huge sand berms for safety.

The Military Ocean Terminal at Sunny Point, N.C., the largest ammunition port in the nation, and the Army's primary east coast deep-water port. Military Ocean Terminal (MOT), Sunny Point, North Carolina, is the Department of Defense's key Atlantic Coast ammunition shipping point. It provides worldwide trans-shipment of DOD ammunition, explosives, and other dangerous cargo under the command of the 1303d Major Port Command. Sunny Point is the military ocean terminal (MOTSU) in North Carolina where munitions are brought in by truck or train and loaded aboard ships bound for Europe. It also supports Fort Bragg. If the 82nd Airborne Division is mobilized, which can happen anytime at short notice, heavy equipment and bulk supplies and ammunition for the division and its supporting units would be shipped out of MOTSU.

The terminal has a port with three docks and a temporary holding area for munitions. The Sunny Point facility, opened in 1955, is operated by the 597th Transportation Terminal Group. The facility is on a 16,000-acre, Army-owned site near the Cape Fear River with 212,000 square feet of building space.

Sunny Point is the only DOD terminal equipped to handle containerized ammunition. The terminal commander also supervises deployment and redeployment of joint forces through the North Carolina State ports of Wilmington and Morehead City. Its Civilian Personnel Advisory Center successfully regionalized under the Southeast Region at Fort Benning in 1996. Major functions of the terminal in support of its ammunition port operations mission include traffic management, Army rail service, Reserve Component training, public works, ammo surveillance and security, global communications, equipment maintenance, contract administration, resource management, and installation logistics. Population served includes 10 soldiers, 228 civilians, 3 USAR Reserve Units, plus 42 USAR IMAs.

Sunny Point had the mission of transshipping over 90 percent of the resupply munitions sent to and from the Gulf during Operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and Desert Sortie. The 1303d Major Port Command (MPC) loaded and discharged 2.1 million tons of munitions from 186 vessels in support of those operations. The port reception and clearance of such vast amounts of cargo, in a relatively short period of time, were the most challenging and difficult tasks. Eighty percent of all ammunition that came to Sunny Point during the war arrived by rail, requiring the unloading of some 27,000 railcars. Like many of the rail lines on Army installations throughout the United States, Sunny Point's 100 miles of track had not been heavily used since the Vietnam War; as a result, they had been maintained only to meet minimum standards. To put it simply, the track was not in condition to suddenly accept a tenfold increase in use. The Army Reserve 1205th Transportation Railway Services Unit (TRSU) provided Sunny Point with the critical mix of manpower, skills, and training that ensured rail cargo operations would not be slowed or halted during the rest of the war.

During Operation Noble Anvil the Air Force sought to replenish its stock of M117 (750-pound) and Mark (MK) 82 (500-pound) bombs in Europe. This was a high-priority Air Force requirement for a very large number of bombs. The requisitioned quantities were too large for air transport, so the bombs would be moved by rail and then on ocean vessels to Europe. They were loaded onto eight trains for delivery to Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point, North Carolina. Six of the trains had arrived at Sunny Point, and two vessels loaded with bombs had headed for Europe when the Yugoslav Government agreed to NATO's peace terms. The two remaining trains were diverted to storage depots.

Deployment Support Command's 597th Transportation Group at Military Ocean Terminal, Sunny Point, North Carolina, proved it could handle the challenge of meeting depot-to-port ammunition distribution and surge requirements when it completed the upload of the Military Sealift Command's MV Chesapeake Bay in two grueling 24-hour workdays. The operation was in support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff exercise, Turbo Cads '99. This was the first time the North Carolina port was used for a Turbo Cads exercise-a test designed to confirm a unit's ability to distribute containerized ammunition. After leaving port, the ship sailed first to Guam to unload 256 containers of munitions, then on to Korea to discharge the remaining 597 containers.

Sunny Point boasts the best safety record in the Military Traffic Management Command and is a recognized leader in environmental stewardship. The humid climate in North Carolina produces lush vegetation throughout the summer and becomes a fire hazard in drier fall and winter months. This has prompted the US Forest Service to give the Southeastern Coastal Area a fire-danger rating comparable to California's West Coast Chaparral Area because the dense growth often provides fuel for hard-to-control wildfires.

To combat this hazard and promote the health of select plants and animals, the 597th US Army Transportation Terminal Group, Military Ocean Terminal at Sunny Point, N.C., designed an efficient program to reduce ground fuel through prescribed burning with low-intensity fires during moderate weather conditions. Carefully managed burns create a buffer should a wildfire occur, giving needed time to protect other sites on the terminal property. Managed burns range from 1,000 to 4,500 acres each year. Sites chosen for prescribed burning are "rotated" so that the same site is selected for controlled burns every three to five years.

On 31 July 1995 Weeks Marine, Inc., Camden, New Jersey was awarded a $7,585,452 Firm Fixed contract for deep draft dredging, Military Ocean Terminal, Sunny Point North Carolina: Deepening entrance channel number 1 from its current depth to 38 feet mean lower low water (MLLW) and widening the channel from its current width to 400 feet, deepening Basin number 1 from its current depth to -38 feet MLLW, deepening Entrance Channel number 2 from its current depth to -38 feet MLLW and widening the channel from its current width to 400 feet, deepening Basin number 2 from its current depth to -38 feet MLLW and widening a portion of the basin from its current width to 1,500 feet. Disposal of dredge material was in the Wilmington Ocean Dredged Material Disposal site (ODMDS). The total quantity of material to be dredged was estimated to be 4,349,100 cubic yards. Work will be performed in Sunny Point, North Carolina, and was expected to be completed by 20 June 1996.

Wilmington is one of only two deep-draft ports in North Carolina and the only one that handles containerized cargo, so the Cape Fear channel is critical to commerce. In September 1996 wave action from Hurricane Fran had reduced the minimum draft across half the channel width by three feet, setting up a severe navigational bottleneck. Philadelphia District sent the dredge McFarland, the only oceangoing vessel in the world equipped for three dredging methods -- bottom-dump, pump-ashore and sidecast. For this assignment she worked exclusively via bottom-dump dredging. Dredged material was deposited in open water outside the channel, where it helped build up an underwater berm to protect nearby shrimping areas. The McFarland concluded its emergency mission on 29 September 1996, having removed more than 167,000 cubic yards of sandy material that was limiting navigation in the channel.

The Military Ocean Terminal at Sunny Point needed dredging in early 1998. The Sunny Point Army Depot had scheduled a deep-draft ship to arrive in mid-March. That left only two months for the New Orleans District's dredge Wheeler to dredge and dispose of 2.3 million cubic yards of sand, silt and clay. The Wheeler operated 24 hours a day, dredging the Cape Fear River and the depot at a production rate up to three times faster than the McFarland, a much smaller dredge. The goal was a 38-feet project depth. The Wheelerfinished dredging in North Carolina 10 March 1998, meeting its goal and making the channel and berth areas ready for the incoming deep-draft ship.

Opening the Sunny Point, N.C., facility to commercial cargo is part of a new initiative of the Military Traffic Management Command. The commercial use will enhance the training of port personnel and earn money for the facility's operation. The first cargo, which arrived 24 June 2001 on the Giga Trans, presented unique challenges. The steam turbine generator, moved in two separate pieces, weighed more than 760,000 pounds. Intermodal Terminal Inc., a logistics company based in Houston, Texas, searched for a port that could handle the offloading and transport of the oversized generator. The firm discovered the cargo was too large to fit between various train trestles and bridges along the rail routes from nearby Atlantic Ocean commercial ports. The solution they found was the Military Traffic Management Command's Sunny Point facility. A pilot program allowing the US Army to conduct commercial movements from the Carolina port was approved in April 2000.

A fire erupted on an ammunition ship berthed at the Military Traffic Management Command's Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point on 14 July 2001. The fire erupted in the engine room of the "Edward Carter" at 4:10 p.m., Saturday afternoon. The vessel is operated by the US Navy's Military Sealift Command.Firefighting units from Sunny Point and nearby communities in Brunswick, New Hanover, Pender and Horry counties responded. Heavy smoke poured from the unit and compounded efforts to extinguish the blaze. As a precaution at the height of the fire, the US Coast Guard closed the adjacent Cape Fear River for four miles in either direction to maritime traffic. The fire was reported extinguished at approximately 10 p.m. One body was recovered on the vessel. A second crewman, reported to have jumped from the ship into the Cape Fear River, was reported missing. The Edward Carter arrived at Sunny Point on June 14 for the loading of prepositioned explosives. The vessel was to have departed for Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean on July 27. The vessel was not being loaded at the time of the fire. The vessel carried approximately 1,232 ammunition containers, the equivalent of 5 million net explosive weight of assorted munitions and missiles.