I'm not a sailor. But when I saw this story, the first thing I thought about was Herman Wouk's (who served on minesweepers in WW2) novel The Caine Mutiny. The USS Caine is sent to San Francisco for an overhaul, and Wouk vividly described the chaotic state of the ship, with the civilian worker's tools, equipment and supplies scatted about, and the ship's own furnishings and material stacked everywhere, because compartments had been emptied for renovation.
Never served on a ship—but I have managed fire suppression systems in hospitals.
Every time we took the system off line we would have a security person standing with an extinguisher on every floor.
Yes, it looked silly. Yes, it consumed a ton of man-hours. But, we were not afraid of the building burning down—that wasn’t really possible. We WERE concerned with smoke control in patient areas. And...lots of O2 used on the floors.
I guess they did not want or think they needed to extend a fire watch.