Panel urges mandating sprinklers for 150 condos

A City Council committee on Tuesday will hear a volunteer fire safety advisory committee’s recommendations, including mandatory retrofitting of 150 of Honolulu’s 360 older condominium buildings with automatic fire sprinklers.

The advisory committee also recommends that all of the 360 buildings that have no sprinklers must pass a fire safety evaluation within six years of the date of a proposed ordinance. The evaluation consists of an assessment of building safety features and fire protection systems.

The Residential Fire Safety Advisory Committee, reconvened after the massive, deadly Marco Polo fire, released its report Wednesday. The report explains that the list of 360 buildings was whittled down to 150 by exempting buildings under 10 stories without an interior corridor.

The committee, made up of various stakeholders including representatives from the Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners, the Honolulu Fire Department and other city and state departments, provided amendments to the mayor’s Bill 69, which would require all existing high-rise residential buildings not equipped with automatic fire sprinklers to have them installed within five years.

The Committee Draft (CD) 1 to Bill 69 says that the 150 high-rises will have 12 years to retrofit the buildings.

A building 20 floors or higher must have the common areas equipped with sprinklers in eight years; a building with 10 to 19 floors, within 10 years. An extension may be granted up to 15 years if a building installs sprinklers in its common areas.

“I am in favor of the life safety evaluation, but I am not in favor of the conclusion that 150 buildings are going to have to do partial retrofitting,” said Jane Sugimura, president of the Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners, who was on the committee. “It’s not quite a compromise, but it is better for the associations than the mayor’s original Bill 69.”

The government is also looking at incentives, waiving fees and offering loans or grants to reduce costs to individual homeowners.

Sugimura, a condo owner, said it should be up to the individual unit owners, and many say it’s not affordable and they would not qualify for the low-income loans proposed.

“Yes I know lives could be lost, but it’s not like the buildings don’t care,” Sugimura said. “Since the Marco Polo fire, I’ve talked to condo associations” and they are setting up fire drills, getting a list of the disabled, setting up a network, putting safety measures in place.

HFD Assistant Chief Socrates Bratakos said, “There are no equivalencies to sprinklers, nothing else that can protect occupants and firefighters, not an alarm system or flame retardant paint. The only real choice is sprinklers,” reiterating the fire chief’s comment the day of the Marco Polo fire that it could have been contained to the unit of origin had it been equipped with sprinklers.