Park Service

The National Park Service's role as caretaker of many of the nation's natural, cultural, and historic treasurers has grown substantially since the agency was created more than 80 years ago. Today, the Park Service is the steward for more than 30,000 structures and more than 80 million artifacts. These structures range from national icons, such as the Statue of Liberty and Independence Hall, to motels, cabins, and visitors' centers. In terms of buildings alone, the Park Service is the federal government's third largest landlord. Upwards of 270 million people visit these facilities each year. GAO found that fire safety efforts at national parks are ineffective. The structural fire activities at the six parks GAO visited--Ford's Theater, Olympic National Park, Prince William Forest Park, Shenandoah National Park, Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park, and Yosemite--lacked many of the basic elements needed for an effective fire safety effort. These gaps included such basics as adequate fire training for employees, adequate fire inspections, and--for many buildings--adequate fire detection or suppression systems. As a result, park visitors, employees, buildings, and artifacts are vulnerable to the threat of fire. These deficiencies occurred primarily because local park managers are not required to meet minimum structural fire safety standards and because structural fire activities have been a low priority within the agency.

GAO noted that: (1) structural fire safety efforts at national parks are not effective; (2) the structural fire activities at the six parks GAO visited lacked many of the basic elements needed for an effective fire safety effort; (3) these gaps included such fundamental things as inadequate fire training for employees, inadequate or nonexistent fire inspections, and--for many buildings--inadequate or nonexistent fire detection or suppression systems; (4) these situations led to many fire safety hazards; (5) GAO found fire extinguishers that had not been checked for years, overnight accommodations that had not been inspected by qualified fire safety people, cabins without smoke detectors, and visitor centers that did not have fire suppression systems; (6) NPS documents show that even when fire hazards are detected, they can go uncorrected for years; (7) as a result of these conditions, the safety of park visitors, employees, buildings, and artifacts are being jeopardized and are vulnerable to fire that could cause damage, destruction, severe injury, and even the loss of life; (8) these deficiencies occur primarily because local park managers are not required to meet minimum structural fire safety standards and because structural fire activities have been a low priority within NPS; (9) the Director of NPS issues general policy to local park managers about how to address structural fire safety; (10) however, park managers are not required to follow NPS' policy, nor are they required to meet a minimum set of fire safety standards; (11) instead, individual park managers are permitted to define the scope and emphasis given to the threat of structural fire at their respective parks; (12) GAO's work, as well as a recent analysis by NPS staff, show that structural fire safety is near the bottom of the parks' priority lists; (13) NPS acknowledges problems in implementing its structural fire safety activities and has begun a number of initiatives to address them; (14) these initiatives include: (a) developing new agency policies for addressing structural fire safety responsibilities; (b) placing specific minimum fire safety requirements on park managers; and (c) developing a process for structural fire building inspections and performing assessments of structural fire risks at each unit of the national park system; and (15) however, until these initiatives are completed and appropriate corrective actions are taken--which, at best, are years away--NPS may not meet its responsibilities for structural fire safety.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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