1,000-degree blaze enters third day on USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego

A fierce blaze that ignited Sunday morning aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard at a San Diego naval base continues to rage, reaching temperatures up to 1,000 degrees, officials say.

More than 400 sailors are battling the fire, ABC News reports. U.S. Navy officials say they don’t know how long it will take to douse the flames aboard the amphibious assault vessel.

The Navy believes the fire ignited Sunday morning in a storage compartment for drywall supplies, KFMB reported. One hundred and sixty officers and enlisted personnel aboard at the time evacuated.

“There’s plastics that go around cabling, those kind of things, there’s different rags, there’s all the things that are used to kind of maintain the ship, clean the ship,” said Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck, the Navy Times reported.

The USS Bonhomme Richard, which normally carries a crew of 1,000, was in port for maintenance, McClatchy News previously reported.

One of the ship’s fire suppression systems had been shut down as part of the work being done, Stars And Stripes reported.

The blaze damaged the ship’s superstructure, KFMB reported.

“There is a tremendous amount of heat underneath and that’s where it’s — it’s flashing up — also forward, closer to the bow again there’s a heat source and we’re trying to get to that as well,” Sobeck said, according to ABC News.

Water used to battle the fire, some of which has been dumped by helicopter, is causing the ship to list, Stars and Stripes reported.

Firefighters also are trying to keep the flames from reaching storage tanks holding more than a million gallons of fuel aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard, the Navy Times reported.

With temperature reaching 1,000 degrees on the burning ship, firefighters are working in 15-minute rotations, ABC News reports. Sobeck said he’s hopeful the ship can be saved.

Firefighters also have to fight their way through fallen debris, including scaffolding that had been erected during maintenance work, Stars and Stripes reported.

The Navy said 36 sailors and 21 civilians have been injured battling the flames, most with smoke inhalation or heat exhaustion, according to the Navy Times.

The U.S. Coast Guard is monitoring the situation in case of an oil spill, and two nearby Navy ships have been moved away from the burning ship, KFMB reported.

This story was originally published July 14, 2020 at 8:13 AM.