SAN DIEGO COUNTY AND THE PERSIAN GULF WAR : They Were a Hellish Few Hours for Wives of Minesweeping Crew

Carolyn Olson had put on silk pajamas and snuggled beneath her electric blanket to watch the news at 8:41 p.m. Sunday when she got a call saying that the assault ship Tripoli, which carried her husband, had hit a mine in the Persian Gulf.

Olson and others with family members aboard the San Diego-based ship were first told there were two missing and four injured. Olson, whose mother died three months ago, was so stunned that she hung up the phone, thought a few moments, and then called back the ship’s ombudsman to make sure she had not been joking.

When Olson realized it was true, she initially panicked. “How could God take my mother away and the only other person I love, my husband?” she cried. “Why is the Lord so mean?”

The Tripoli was leading a minesweeping mission when it hit a floating mine that gouged a 16-by-25-foot hole in its forward starboard hull, about 10 feet below the waterline. Several compartments were flooded, but the damage was not deemed serious enough to cancel operations and the Tripoli will continue its search efforts, according to Navy officials in Washington.

As it turned out, the Tripoli’s crew suffered only minor injuries. One man suffered a broken collarbone, another had a concussion, two others were treated for minor cuts and bruises.

But for a hellish few hours until they learned that no one had been lost, Olson and other wives speculated that it might be their husbands who were missing, perhaps blown to pieces. They tried to re-create in their minds where their husbands would be on the ship at 4:20 a.m., the time of the blast. Were they in the upper decks and safe? Or were they below?

Word of the accident tore through the community of wives and families. The system of phone trees, set up so families are contacted in exactly these types of cases, kicked into gear. One wife called seven others, who in turn called more. In little time, most families knew and were anxiously waiting to learn more.

Olson’s husband, Warren, who has been in the Navy 13 years, works below sea level in the boiler room. For the first time in their two-year marriage, Olson said, she had the sense that he was trying to relay a message to her.

“I could feel him saying, ‘Honey, I’m OK, I’m OK. Don’t worry,’ ” said Olson, 36, and her panic began to ebb. “It’s just really nerve-wracking.”

For her and the others, it was the second terrifying mishap to befall the ship. In December, as the vessel sailed to the Gulf, a helicopter attached to the Tripoli crashed into the north Pacific, killing four. That accident occurred at the same time Kimberly Carter’s husband was scheduled to fly in a helicopter.

Carter, 28, president of a wives support group, was bowling Sunday night when she got a call saying that once again, misfortune had struck the ship. When she returned to her bowling team, they gently suggested she go home. But Carter, knowing her husband was on the upper decks of the vessel, was certain he was safe.

She stayed at the lanes, saying, “What do you want me to do, sit home alone and cry?”

There, at the bowling alley, she got six calls. With each, she got increasing bits of information and reassurance. After she returned home, she saw her husband of six years, Joseph, a 33-year-old damage control chief, issuing orders to his men on television, and she knew he was fine.

Carter, who served in the Navy for two years, approaches this deployment like an old hand. She has been aboard the Tripoli, and she had access to an important fact: The ship had full power after the incident, indicating that it had not suffered great damage.

But for others, such as Olson or Faye Alvarado, who had never had their husbands away from home during a deployment, the assignment to a war zone was a double blow. Not only did they have to adjust to their husbands’ absence, they also had to contemplate the possibility that they might not return.

Alvarado had been married two weeks when her husband abruptly departed for the Persian Gulf. The Tripoli, with 13,000 sailors and Marines, was one of a 13-ship task force that left San Diego and Long Beach on Dec. 1. Before meeting her husband, Robert, a 27-year-old boiler technician, Alvarado had not known any sailors, and she knew nothing about ships.

“I am learning about ships the hard way,” sighed Alvarado, 31.

She was at work when her 11-year-old son from her first marriage called to tell her he had seen a television report about the Tripoli hitting a mine.

She snapped at him, telling him not to make up scary stories. Minutes later, she got a call from the Tripoli’s ombudsman with the same news. Alvarado began to weep.

She had a premonition that the day was ill-fated. She had told herself not to be superstitious when a black cat ran in front of her, but somehow it made her feel afraid. When the ombudsman called, it was as though her nightmare had become real.

“Please,” she cried. “Don’t let it be my husband.”