Over 400 US Navy sailors are desperately fighting the 1,000-degree fire raging on a warship for more than a day

• The US Navy revealed Monday that over 400 US Navy sailors are battling the raging fire aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard, which caught fire early Sunday.
• The fire has devastated large parts of the ship, but Navy officials continue to express optimism that the ship can be saved.
• A former amphibious assault ship commander said the ship was too far gone for it to be worth fixing.

A devastating fire continues to spread throughout the US Navy amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard, a US Navy official revealed in an update Monday, over 24 hours after the ship burst into flames.

Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck, the commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 3, told reporters that the fire, which is believed to have originated in the lower vehicle storage area, has damaged the superstructure, collapsed the masts, and spread to the bow.

Sobeck said at the moment it is believed that there are two decks standing between a fire as hot as 1,000 degrees in some places and about 1 million gallons of fuel, but he said that while the risk of the fire reaching the fuel was "absolutely a concern," the response team would "make sure" the fire does not reach the fuel. With all the water that has been dumped onto the ship, the Bonhomme Richard is listing on its side. Navy helicopters alone have dumped 415 buckets of water on the ship.

And a total of 57 people, including 34 sailors and 23 civilians, have suffered injuries, such as smoke inhalation and heat exhaustion. Five remain in the hospital.

Sobeck told reporters Sunday evening that "we're absolutely going to make sure it sails again."

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He added: "We're just going to get right back at it once we get this thing contained and put out."

On Monday, he reiterated that he remained hopeful. There are more than 400 sailors battling the blaze aboard the Bonhomme Richard. "We're doing everything we can," the admiral said, adding that the Navy responders would "make every effort to save the ship."

'Hell in a very small space'

The ongoing fight aboard the ship is intense. "Shipboard fires are enormously hard to fight," retired Adm. James Stavridis, a former NATO commander, wrote on Twitter Monday.

"Having been through a couple, I can tell you they are hell in a very small space," he said. With temperatures as high as they are in some places on the ship, sailors are rotating in and out on 15-minute firefighting shifts.

The specific cause of the fire is unknown and will likely remain unknown until the fire can be extinguished.

The ship was undergoing maintenance at Naval Base San Diego when the fire ignited.

"At least some, if not all of, the major firefighting systems are tagged out for maintenance," retired US Navy Capt. Earle Yerger, the former commander of the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan, told Insider. Sobeck confirmed that the Halon fire-suppression system was not active. Furthermore, "in the yards, you have multiple cables, wires, and hoses running straight through passageways," he said. "As a result, you can't close the fire doors. Once [the fire] got seeded and got going, there is no way to contain it. It was like a chimney all the way up to the island."

Yerger added that limited manning may have also hindered the crew's early ability to fight the fire, saying that had the ship been at sea with a full crew, they would have likely had it under control in less than an hour. At the time of the fire, there were only 160 people on the ship.

While Sobeck has expressed optimism the ship could be saved, Yerger said the ship was likely too far gone.

"You're not going to fix it," he told Insider, adding that the ship's future probably involved being towed out and sunk to a "deep point in the ocean."

"Build a new America-class and call it a day. This ship is 23 years old. You'd be better off to start fresh," he said, referring to the newer amphibs replacing the Wasp-class vessels. "Just let it go."