Exclusive: Video reveals damage from fire on US aircraft carrier after sources say fire control system failed

By Brian Todd, Sean Lyngaas, Jim Sciutto, Zachary Cohen, CNN

(CNN) — When a fire burned aboard the world’s biggest aircraft carrier in March as it took part in operations against Iran, the US Navy released a short statement saying the blaze had been “contained,” that two sailors had received medical treatment for “non-life-threatening injuries” and that the carrier was “fully operational.”

But new video obtained by CNN makes clear the fire was more severe and damaging than the Navy suggested. Bunks where sailors slept were totally destroyed, the video shows. What remained of the beds was charred, twisted metal beneath a ceiling also apparently hollowed out by the inferno. Wires dangled from the ceiling and heaps of ashes littered the ground around the bunks, according to the video.

“I seriously thought we were going to lose the ship,” one sailor aboard the ship, the USS Gerald R. Ford, told CNN, describing how he felt while fighting the fire. “It’s either fight or die.”

The ship’s fire-suppression system failed to work, leaving the sailors scrambling to put out the blaze, according to the sailor and a senior US official familiar with the incident.

The senior US official told CNN that the Navy’s public statement downplayed the impact the fire had on the Ford as it was in the Red Sea supporting US military operations against Iran, as the fire did have an effect on capabilities. Two days passed before the Ford was able to fly sorties again, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle said in April, and the ship was forced to head to port in Greece for temporary repairs.

Asked about the extent of the fire and the fire control system’s failure to function, a Navy spokesperson told CNN, “The investigation of the fire is ongoing.”

It took the Ford’s crew about 30 hours to put out the fire, clean it up and prevent it from reigniting, and roughly 600 sailors lost access to their bunks due to the damage, CNN previously reported.

“It shouldn’t have gotten that bad. The fire-suppression system built into the ship should have put it out,” the sailor said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation from the Navy. “Everybody — me included — helped put the fire out.”

Videos obtained by CNN and accounts of sailors on the Ford paint the clearest public picture yet of the adversity that sailors experienced during a record-breaking, 11-month deployment that included the war with Iran and the US military operation in Venezuela.

“Big fires are always a challenge, and this was significant — laundry and dryer-based fire,” Caudle told CNN after the Ford returned to its home port in Virginia. “The crew handled that so well, and they fought it brilliantly and courageously and basically was back in the fight within a matter of days.”

The $13-billion ship was central to US military operations against Iran. Pilots aboard the Ford flew wave after wave of bombing sorties that hammered Iranian targets. But the massive carrier wasn’t solely on the offensive.

The carrier strike group that includes the Ford was under “persistent threat from enemy missiles and one-way attack drones,” a Presidential Unit Citation awarded to the group said.

The sailor interviewed by CNN recalled at one point, when the Ford was in the Red Sea, seeing an orange streak in the sky as Iranian munitions appeared on the horizon. When Iranian missiles or drones would come within a certain range of the Ford, the ship would “sound an alert, telling us to expect to get hit and do damage control,” the sailor said.

The fire wasn’t the only issue during the deployment. The ship’s toilets were repeatedly clogged. Another video from aboard the Ford obtained by CNN shows human waste filled to the brim of toilet after toilet.

“If you were in the forward section of the ship, you’d have to walk all the way to the aft section, just to find a toilet that worked,” the sailor said.

The fallout from the fire could’ve been worse. Hunter Stires, who served as a maritime strategist to the then-Navy secretary until 2025, said the ship’s quick recovery from the fire was a testament to the crew’s training and resiliency amid a record-breaking deployment.

“Fire and flooding are the two greatest dangers aboard any ship,” Stires told CNN. “The US Navy, to its credit, has an organizational culture and design philosophy that is relentlessly focused on damage control preparation and system redundancy in order to assure ship survivability.”

“War and battle damage is inherently unpredictable,” Stires said, when asked about the failure of the fire-suppression system. “You don’t know what is going to break,” he said, adding that’s why training and preparing sailors is so important.

Commissioned into the Navy in 2017, the Ford is the newest and most technologically advanced of the 11 US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and has become a symbol of the strength, and limits, of US naval power.

The Ford’s electronic catapult system allows it to launch anything from small drones to big aircraft, giving commanders an array of firepower options, Brent Sadler, a 26-year veteran of the Navy and former submarine officer, previously told CNN. The other 10 US aircraft carriers don’t have that capability, according to Sadler.

The Ford’s deployment, which ended when it returned to Norfolk, Virginia, in May, also saw the ship help with the US operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The deployment — the longest operational one by a carrier since the Vietnam War — also included stops in the Mediterranean and Norway.

The Ford is now looking at an extended phase of maintenance from all of the wear-and-tear of the voyage, including additional repairs related to the fire. One US official told CNN it could be a least a year before the Ford is ready to sail again, and that other ships may have to fill the gap.

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