At least 57 people were injured when a fire and an explosion broke out Sunday on a U.S. Navy warship that was docked in San Diego, causing heavy damage and burning into the next day, officials said.
The ship, the U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard, had been docked at the U.S. naval base in San Diego when a fire was reported at 8:30 a.m. in a lower cargo hold that is used for vehicle storage, the Navy said.
It was not immediately clear what had caused the fire or the explosion. The fire was still burning on Monday morning, and local news footage showed black smoke rising from the ship. Two helicopters had joined the firefighting efforts, the Naval Surface Forces said on Twitter.
About 160 sailors were aboard the ship at the time, according to the Navy, which said that 34 sailors and 23 civilians were injured. The injuries were not life-threatening, and included heat exhaustion and smoke inhalation. All crew members had been accounted for, the Navy said, and five sailors remained hospitalized in stable condition.
Rear Adm. Philip E. Sobeck said during a news conference on Sunday night that military and civilian firefighters were still trying to save the ship.
“This is what we’re trained to do,” he said.
But the fate of the vessel was uncertain.
Fire Chief Colin Stowell of San Diego told CNN that the fire could burn for several days, “down to the waterline.”
A spokeswoman for San Diego Fire-Rescue said later on Sunday that Chief Stowell was not available for further interviews and referred questions to the Navy, which could not say how extensive the damage was or how much it would cost to repair the ship.
Admiral Sobeck vowed that the ship would return to service.
“We’re absolutely going to make sure it sails again,” he said.
The Bonhomme Richard is one of eight Wasp-class amphibious assault ships and can carry more than 1,000 sailors, according to the Navy. Its cost has been estimated at $761 million by the Federation of American Scientists.
Two other warships that had been docked nearby were moved to other piers as a precaution, the Navy said.
The Bonhomme Richard is capable of carrying helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. It was docked at the base in San Diego for scheduled maintenance between deployments, said Krishna Jackson, a Navy spokeswoman. The sailors assigned to it were staying in Navy or private housing on shore and were not on board when the fire started, Ms. Jackson said. A “duty section” of sailors trained to fight fires was on board when the fire started, she said, and they were the first to respond.
Admiral Sobeck said that there was no ordnance on the ship at the time of the fire. The ship has light arms but would not normally have large explosive munitions, such as airdropped bombs, on board while docked, according to the Navy.
The fire was the latest in a series of disasters for the Navy in the Pacific. In 2017, two Navy destroyers collided with two commercial vessels, near Japan and Singapore, killing a total of 17 American sailors. And this year, the acting Navy secretary resigned over his bungled response to an outbreak of the coronavirus aboard an aircraft carrier. Hundreds of sailors were sickened, and the captain’s plea for help led to his removal and a formal investigation.
Experts said that although a fire posed special challenges on a naval vessel, sailors were thoroughly equipped to handle fires on ships.
“Everyone gets trained to be a firefighter, flooding stopper — all the damage control — and that’s because when you’re out at sea, there’s nobody coming to you,” said Eric A. Dukat, a retired U.S. Navy commander who is now an associate professor in the College of Maritime Operational Warfare at the U.S. Naval War College.
Professor Dukat, who worked as a damage control assistant aboard the U.S.S. Wasp, said fires on ships “are not like a house fire” and present a unique hazard because of the rising heat inside the vessel and the intense steam that’s produced when water is used.
“Imagine a fire inside of a ship, just imagine the inside of your oven,” he said.
In 1967, a fire on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Forrestal killed more than 130 sailors after a rocket accidentally fired on the flight deck and ignited several explosions. The episode has been used as a lesson on how to tackle safety procedures aboard Navy vessels, Professor Dukat said.
John Liddle, a lieutenant commander who retired from the Navy last year after 20 years of service, said in an interview Sunday that fighting a fire while a ship is in port can be harder because not all crew members are available and safety standards are different when the vessel is not at sea.
“The things you would normally do to keep a fire contained, you can’t do them,” he said.
Mr. Liddle was second-in-command of the U.S.S. Hue City when a fire was sparked onboard hundreds of miles off the coast of Bermuda in April 2014.
The fire on his ship was sparked by rags that sailors had stored in “basically a chimney,” he said. The Navy relieved him of his duties after an investigation into the fire.
“Even in a really horrible, awful, wartime fire, you’re still going to be able to keep the ship afloat,” Mr. Liddle said. “Where the problem really comes, where a ship is lost for good, is normally actually because of the water.”
“You’re putting so much water into it in one place or another that all of a sudden it’s not buoyant in the same way that it was designed to be,” he said.
The Bonhomme Richard is outfitted to carry landing craft to transport equipment and troops as well as landing boats. It is 847 feet long and has a crew of 102 officers and just over 1,000 sailors.
The ship was commissioned on Aug. 15, 1998, and is the third Navy warship to bear the name Bonhomme Richard.
The first was a 900-ton merchant vessel fitted with 40 guns and placed under the command of Capt. John Paul Jones during the Revolutionary War. Jones named the ship after the French translation of the pen name Benjamin Franklin used as the author of “Poor Richard’s Almanac.”
The original Bonhomme Richard was the first Navy vessel to defeat an enemy ship in combat, the H.M.S. Serapis, in 1779. The present-day U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard has participated in numerous operations, including Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Anaconda and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Aimee Ortiz, Brian Pietsch and Allyson Waller contributed reporting.
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