USS Miami in Portsmouth

The Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Miami (SSN-755) in dry dock at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard two months before a fire destroyed the submarine in May 2012. (U.S. Navy photo by: Jim Cleveland/Released)

WASHINGTON — Independent government auditors have concluded the US Navy lacks a centralized “process” for learning from and improving its ability to prevent shipboard fires and is not effectively analyzing the impact such fires have on its fleet.

“Establishing a process for the consistent collection, analysis, and sharing of fire-related lessons learned would assist the Navy to improve behavior and reduce the risk of ships repeating costly mistakes,” according to an April 20 report by the Government Accountability Office.

Lawmakers sought GAO’s assessment of the Navy’s practices in light of the service’s track record on shipboard fires, which includes $4 billion in damages between May 2008 through December 2022, according to the watchdog.

Those statistics include the loss of the Bonhomme Richard, the amphibious warship set ablaze in 2020 in an incident a four-star admiral dubbed “clearly preventable.” The enlisted sailor the Navy accused of starting that fire was acquitted of arson charges in September 2022.

“Although the Navy has begun improving the collection of data related to fires aboard ships during maintenance in the Navy’s safety database, no organization is analyzing the broad effects of fires on the Navy’s operations and strategic resources,” according the report GAO report. “Without conducting such analyses, the Navy will not have a complete picture of the magnitude of risks associated with ship fires.”

The GAO also considered the Navy’s responses to fires on at least nine other ships or submarines aside from the Bonhomme Richard, such as the USS Miami, a submarine that was destroyed by a fire in May 2012 while at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine. Rather than pay the $700 million in estimated repair costs, the Navy decommissioned that boat 10 years ahead of schedule, GAO noted.

“After the loss of the USS Miami, the Navy realized that it could not afford another setback from a fire of this magnitude,” according to the report. “Even though the Navy took steps to raise standards and capabilities to improve fire safety following the USS Miami fire in 2012, the Navy experienced nine additional major fires aboard ships undergoing maintenance over the next 10 years.”

In the wake of the Bonhomme Richard’s destruction, senior Navy officials touted some efforts to improve fire safety, and the GAO report cited those efforts as progress. But still, auditors found conflicting views within the service’s different agencies about who is responsible for “analyzing the broad effects of fires on Navy operations.”

“Fires aboard Navy vessels undergoing maintenance have affected the availability of these vessels for deployment. For example, the USS Bonhomme Richard fire resulted in more than $3 billion in damage and a later decision to decommission what would have been one of the Navy’s most combat-capable amphibious assault ships,” according to the report. “As a result, the Navy has had to make adjustments to which ships are available to support combatant command requirements.”

GAO’s auditors made three recommendations to Navy leadership, of which Jay Stefany, a senior Navy acquisition official, concurred with all of them. The recommendations include establishing a process that will “allow consistent collection, analysis, and sharing of fire safety-related lessons learned;” ensure a single organization in the Navy is responsible for using incident data to analyze the broad effects fires have on Navy operations and establish a service-wide goals and performance measures for the Navy’s fire safety training activities.