The Navy announced Monday it will decommission the $760 million USS Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault ship that succumbed to a dayslong fire in San Diego Harbor this summer.
“We did not come to this decision lightly,” Secretary of the Navy Kenneth Braithwaite said in a statement. “We came to the conclusion that it is not fiscally responsible to restore her.”
The Navy assessed that it would cost $3 billion and take up to seven years to restore the 22-year-old ship.
A conflagration began in a storage level of the ship early on a Sunday in July. Within hours, hundreds of firefighters were attacking billowing black smoke.
Over four days, helicopters doused the ship with more than 1,500 water bucket drops while tugs tried to cool 1,000-degree temperatures in the hull with water jets and prevent the fire from reaching an estimated 1 million gallons of fuel.
In all, 63 personnel, including 40 sailors and 23 civilians, were treated for minor injuries, including heat exhaustion and smoke inhalation related to the fire and the attempt to quell the flames.
Nonetheless, the Navy conducted a four-month study and weighed a number of options, Braithwaite said.
Rebuilding and repurposing the ship was valued at over $1 billion, more than constructing a new hospital ship, submarine tender, or command-and-control ship.
A Navy official told the Washington Examiner that determining the cause of the fire is part of an ongoing investigation.
