Toilet Trouble On Navy Carrier Leaves Sailors Doing Pee-Pee Dance

Remember when your dad would’t pull the car over so you could go to the bathroom? Now imagine that your dad is the US Navy and that the car is aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush (CVN-77).

Turns out the 423 toilets on the Navy’s latest ship aren’t ready to report for duty.

The Navy Times reports that toilets have been malfunctioning since the ship’s initial deployment. The toilet’s vacuum system — which consists of 400km of tubing — has completely failed on several occasions leaving sailors to “anchors away” off catwalks and into bottles.

The Navy blames the sailors for clogging the system on the $US6.2billion boat with feminine hygiene products and clothing. It states that the system boats a 94 per cent availability rate. That sounds good until you realise that you’re probably going to be the one that has to go during the other 6 per cent of the time. There are currently 25 toilet-related maintenance calls a week on the sip and that’s led to over 1000 man-hours spent fixing crappers. During one outrage, technicians worked 35 hours non-stop trying to fix the problem.

It sounds hilarious, but the outages have led to a rise in urinary tract infections from sailors holding it in. Fortunately, like the awesome Americans they are, the sailors are allowing those with the highest need to visit the “poop deck” to hop to the front of a bathroom line. Non sibi sed patriae! (Translation: Not self, but country.)

[Navy Times via Geekosystem]