blow. The impact completely destroyed the bow sonar systems and mangled the covers of the forward torpedo tubes. K-19 was able to return to port where the boat was repaired and returned to the fleet. Gato was relatively undamaged and continued her patrol. Fires On 24 February 1972, a fire broke out while the submarine was at a depth of , some from Newfoundland, Canada. The boat surfaced and the crew was evacuated to surface warships except for 12 men trapped in the aft torpedo room. Towing was delayed by a gale, and rescuers could not reach the aft torpedo room because of conditions in the engine room. The fire killed 28 sailors aboard K-19 and two others who died after they were transferred to rescue ships. Investigators determined that the fire was caused by a hydraulic fluid leak onto a hot filter. The rescue operation lasted more than 40 days and involved over 30 ships. From 15 June through 5 November 1972, K-19 was repaired and put back into service. On 15 November 1972, another fire broke out in compartment 6, but it was put out by the chemical fire-extinguisher system and there were no casualties. Reclassification On 25 July 1977, K-19 was reclassified in the Large Submarine class, and on 26 July 1979, she was reclassified as a communications submarine and given the symbol KS-19 (КС-19). On 15 August 1982, an electrical short circuit resulted in severe burns to two sailors; one, V. A. Kravchuk, died five days later. On 28 November 1985, the ship was upgraded to the 658s (658с) variant. Decommissioning On 19 April 1990 the submarine was decommissioned, and was transferred in 1994 to the naval repair yard at Polyarny. In March 2002, she was towed to the Nerpa Shipyard, Snezhnogorsk, Murmansk, to be scrapped. In 2006, a section of K-19 was purchased by Vladimir Romanov, who once served on the submarine as a conscript, with the intention of "Turning it into a Moscow-based meeting place to build links between submarine veterans from Russia and other countries." So far, the plans remain on hold, and many of K-19s survivors have objected to them. Theatre and film In 1969 writer Vasily Aksyonov wrote a play about the nuclear incident. The movie K-19: The Widowmaker (2002), starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson, is based on the story of the K-19s first disaster. The original crew of the