port, where the cause of the accident was identified. When the battery was running low, the submarine surfaced with a vent opening for oxygen, which was consumed heavily by the charging diesel engines. At the same time, a sea wave surged, and seawater started to flow into the opening vent that automatically closed to prevent flooding. There was no single device on the submarine to detect low oxygen level and the crew suffocated due to the diesel engines consuming all the oxygen present within the submarine. As a consequence, the Commander and the Political Commissar of the People's Liberation Army Navy were dismissed from service, as well as the Commander, Political Commissar and Chief of Staff of the Northern Fleet. K-159 sinking In August 2003, the Russian sank in the Barents Sea. This submarine had been decommissioned, and she was being towed away for scrapping. Of her skeleton crew of ten sailors, nine were killed. USS Hartford grounding On 25 October 2003, the American ran aground in the harbor of La Maddalena, Sardinia, in the Mediterranean Sea. This grounding caused about nine million dollars' worth of damage to Hartford. 2004 HMCS Chicoutimi fire On 5 October 2004, the Canadian submarine suffered from two fires after leaving Faslane harbour for Halifax harbour. One officer, Canadian Forces Lieutenant (Navy) Chris Saunders, died the following day while he was being flown via helicopter to a hospital in Ireland. Canadian Forces investigators concluded that poor insulation of some power cables caused the fires. The following board of inquiry found that the fire was caused by a series of events that caused electrical arcing at cable joints from seawater penetration at the joints. 2005 USS San Francisco collision with undersea terrain On 8 January 2005, the , while underway and submerged, collided with an undersea seamount about south of Guam in the Marianas Islands. One of her sailors, Machinist mate 2nd Class (MM2(SS)) Joseph Allen Ashley, of Akron, Ohio, died from the injuries he suffered in the collision. This happened while San Francisco was on a high-speed voyage to visit Brisbane, Australia. An additional 97 sailors were injured in this accident, including two with dislocated shoulders. The collision with the seamount was so severe that San Francisco nearly sank. Accounts from the scene related a desperate struggle for positive buoyancy after her forward ballast tanks had been ruptured. Several news web sites stated that the