Man, 49, found dead after fire in Makiki high-rise

The 49-year-old Makiki man who lived in unit 402 of the Oahuan Tower walked his young daughter home from school every day, but on Wednesday afternoon, residents worried that she still may be waiting for him.

Firefighters responding late Wednesday morning to a three-alarm fire discovered a man’s body inside the condominium where the fire broke out, but officials had not positively identified the body nor provided an approximate age.

Fellow resident and Red Cross volunteer Paul Klink said he feared the girl, roughly 8 or 9 years old, might come home. He called area schools trying to find her school and her mother, the 49-year-old man’s estranged wife, but had not gotten a call back by 3:45 p.m.

“Thank God she wasn’t home,” he said. “I have people stationed looking for her. I called local schools. No one’s called me yet,” adding that police and fire personnel are also searching. Most elementary schools are on spring break this week.

The Red Cross assisted about eight displaced residents of four other units damaged by fire or water, including units 302, 502, 401 and 403.

Like July’s fatal fire at the nearby Marco Polo condominium tower, the 10-story building at 1710 Makiki St. had no sprinklers. The Marco Polo fire at the 568-unit tower at 2333 Kapiolani Blvd. killed four, caused an estimated $100 million in damage and destroyed 30 residences.

The Honolulu Fire Department responded to the alarm for the Oahuan Tower at 11:23 a.m., arrived at 11:26 a.m. and initially found no signs of fire. Thirty seconds later, fire broke out and was fully involved in 402.

An occupant of unit 402 “reported being trapped and unable to get out,” fire Capt. Scot Seguirant said in a news release.

Firefighters conducted primary and secondary searches of the damaged units and found the man’s body in the bedroom, he said. The origin and cause remain under investigation and damage estimates were not available Wednesday.

HFD sent 14 units with 51 personnel to the Makiki fire. It was brought under control at 11:42 a.m. and extinguished at 12:37 p.m.

Seguirant said if the building had sprinklers, the fire “wouldn’t have lapped up to the next floor. It would have been a totally different fire if it was sprinklered.”

The building’s fire alarm system required someone to activate a manual pull station.

Resident manager Lowell Gerry said someone has to pull a lever on every floor of the 60-year-old building, which has 56 residential units. “I noticed firefighters pulling it,” he said.

“We have a buildingwide fire alarm, but each unit is supposed to have its own fire alarm,” he said.

Seth Sims, 31, who lives on the 10th floor, said of the manual fire alarms: “They definitely need to be updated. A couple people had to be convinced that there’s a fire.”

His wife, Crystal, 41, saw smoke coming from downstairs when looking over the railing, but the wind was blowing smoke down the street. “When I tried to show a neighbor — the neighbor is afraid of heights, she wouldn’t look over (the railing).”

Gerry was using a gas hedge trimmer and didn’t hear anything, but saw smoke and went out into a nearby intersection to see where it was coming from. “I was surprised to see smoke billowing out of the fourth floor,” he said.

Tyler Pangelinan, 18, was home alone in unit 403, next to 402, and was asleep in his bedroom.

“I could hear sirens and the noise of glass breaking,” he said. When the smoke became unbearable, he got up.

“I was paranoid I would be trapped,” he said. “When I opened the door, the only thing I could think of grabbing was my keys. The smoke was everywhere.”

Condo unit 502 owner Kisi Haine, 57, left at 9:30 a.m., and got a call from a friend in Tantalus who said, “‘Your building’s burning.’ I didn’t rush home because there’s not a whole lot I can do.”

The fire gutted her unit, she was told.

She is in favor of sprinklers. “The expense doesn’t outweigh life,” she said. “If they could bring costs down, people would jump on it.”

Pangelinan’s father, Mike, 44, who designs fire alarm protection systems, recently completed work on the Marco Polo high-rise.

“A lot of older buildings have been updated and retrofitted to meet the current codes,” he said.

He said his neighbor appeared troubled at home, but happy and laughing with his kids every Thursday at the nearby farmers market.

Johnny Daniels, 53, said, “He was a nice guy,” a former athlete, who would chat with him while washing clothes at the building’s laundry.