President Donald Trump's executive orders restricting hiring across the federal government are preventing the Navy from filling key fire safety oversight jobs, a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says.
Without the staff to fill the roles the Navy is relying on the crews of the ships, which are also understaffed, to ensure contractors follow safety regulations, the report says.
A Navy investigation found poor oversight of the contractors who do major repair work on Navy ships to be a contributing factor in the devastating fire that destroyed the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego five years ago.
The GAO report, published Wednesday, says every key organization across the Navy responsible for fire safety during maintenance and repairs has staffing shortfalls.
Most of the Navy's type commands — led by three-star admirals responsible for maintenance — and Regional Maintenance Centers reported delaying the hiring of fire safety staff in response to Trump's executive orders, the report says.
"Pretty much every area maintenance center that we talked to talked about these staffing shortages," said Shelby Oakley, a director at the GAO who monitors Navy contracting and shipbuilding.
She said the Navy has improved the fire safety procedures and trainings for ships undergoing maintenance and made significant efforts to implement the lessons from the fire.
"It's just that those efforts didn't really focus on what the contractors were doing and how we're overseeing what (they're) doing to hold them accountable ... to ensure that we don't have another fire like this," Oakley said.
She said the executive orders restricting federal hiring, in addition to buyouts and retirements over the last year, are having impacts across the military.
"We've been seeing it across a number of (GAO's) other efforts," she said. "Those have been having a significant impact on staffing — within the Navy specifically — but other services as well."
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
An investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the July 2020 fire was the result of arson. A junior sailor was arrested, tried and acquitted at a 2022 court-martial.
But investigators also found that poor industrial hygiene by contractors contributed to the conditions on the ship that allowed the fire to spread so fast.
It burned for almost five days, injured more than 60 people and led to the total loss of the $1 billion warship — one that had just finished $250 million in upgrades and had almost two decades of service life ahead.
The GAO's report raises other questions about the Navy's investigations.
More than a year after the fire, the Navy published two investigations — one into the fire on the Bonhomme Richard and a Major Fires Review that looked at other fires on ships undergoing maintenance.
But the GAO found neither included key fire safety violations by contractors aboard the Bonhomme Richard in the months leading up to the fire.
Oakley said this was concerning.
"It really did raise a lot of question marks for us in terms of why these weren't something that was considered as part of ... the Navy's own investigation," she said.
The report says the staffing shortages put the burden of contractor oversight on sailors assigned to the ships — ships that are themselves undermanned. The sailors also have no authority over contractors, Oakley said.
"They just don't have the authority to tell them what to do," Oakley said. "So even if they see something, they can't go up and say, 'hey, you know, you're supposed to be doing this differently,' or 'why is this here?' The contractor doesn't have to respond to the crew," she said.
The GOA recommends the Navy impose financial consequences for contractors that violate fire regulations. The report doesn't explicitly recommend filling the open jobs — Oakley said the GAO doesn't typically recommend spending increases — but does say the Navy should find a way to maximize its existing resources.
The GAO surveyed six Navy ships that have undergone shipyard maintenance since the Bonhomme Richard fire. Across those six ships, it found 343 Corrective Action Requests issued to contractors related to fire safety violations.
KPBS asked Naval Surface Forces about the claims in the report but has not received comment. The Navy concurred with GAO's recommendations, the report says.
