Yes. There were likely little (or absent) watches, very sparsely inhabited, no compartmental integrity, fire suppression deactivated, and so on.
As I said in a previous post, fire is almost always the greatest peril to a naval vessel, and sailors spend (or at least used to spend, when it wasn’t being cut into by diversity training and CRT training) a great deal of time learning how to prevent it and fight it.
I always felt that US Navy damage control teams were well enough trained and proficient enough to fight fires caused by battle damage, and suppress nearly any fire that started in a compartment.
I don’t feel that way anymore, but even now with training and proficiency apparently quite low, if that ship had been fully manned and at sea, I doubt the fire would have been more than a blip in a typical day, it would have been suppressed in no time.
Of course, with the Fitzgerald and McCain incidents, I even wonder about fire-fighting capabilities now.
“Yes. There were likely little (or absent) watches ...”
We also read about inexplicable ship collisions. Or the only explanation is that those manning the ship weren’t paying attention.