U.S. Navy Destroyer Suffers Serious Fire in the Indo-Pacific

U.S. officials have confirmed that a fire seriously damaged a guided missile destroyer operating in the Indo-Pacific Command area of operations.

Multiple officials told CBS that a significant fire had occurred aboard the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Higgins. One official confirmed that the blaze took out propulsion and electrical power - a significant development if true. A casualty would have to affect both of the Burke-class' two fully redundant, compartmentalized engine rooms in order to disable the vessel.

The USS Higgins' exact location and the circumstances of the fire have not been disclosed. No injuries have been reported. The ship is based in Yokosuka, attached to 7th Fleet, and has sailed several sensitive missions in the Indo-Pacific, including two transits of the Taiwan Strait in the last two years. Higgins' last AIS signal transmission was detected in Singapore in February.

It is the fourth fire event affecting U.S. Navy warships this year, following the fire aboard destroyer USS Zumwalt last week (three injuries), the laundry room fire aboard carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (two injured) and the small fire aboard carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower last month (eight injured).

USS Higgins is a Flight II Arleigh Burke-class commissioned in 1999. She is named for a Marine Corps officer who was killed by terrorists in Lebanon during the peacekeeping deployment there in 1988. Higgins was on hand for the Hainan Island emergency landing in 2001 - a famous diplomatic incident in which a U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft was hit by a Chinese fighter and forced to land in China - and helped bombard Syria in 2018 in retaliation for the al-Assad regime's use of chemical weapons. She has been forward-deployed in Yokosuka since 2021.