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Louisiana firefighters assist Navy in days-long ship fire

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BATON ROUGE- A team of firefighters from Louisiana helped extinguish a Navy ship fire in San Diego that burned for five days straight.

Fire fighters from U.S. Fire Pump in Livingston Parish were dispatched to California earlier in the week.  A group of 11 was sent to help put out the fire aboard the navy ship USS Bonhomme Richard.

"We've fought ship fires before, so this is just part of our business," U.S. Fire Pump owner Chris Ferrara said. 

Just last year, the group was involved in rescuing crew members on a capsized cargo ship off the Georgia coast. 

Though there are no rescue missions involved in this fire, the group is doing what they do best. 

"We have several teams inside the ship knocking fire down, making great progress," Ferrara said.

"We trucked just about all of our major equipment in four 18-wheelers coming out of Baton Rouge. They'll be here about seven tonight, and then we'll bring a load of equipment on a charter flight and start the initial fire attack," he said Tuesday.

The fire fight was intense: "When you look at this thing, it's a major ship with different compartments and an aircraft carrier. This ship is extremely long, extremely tall, and it takes a lot of time to go through each compartment and knock every fire down," Ferrara said in an interview with WBRZ.

Thirty-eight sailors and 23 civilians received minor injuries from the initial explosion on the ship.

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