Council passes ‘mandatory’ sprinkler bill that allows owners to opt out

A bill passed by the Honolulu City Council requires about 150 older high-rise condominiums to be retrofitted with automated sprinkler systems — except it really doesn’t.

The final version of Bill 69 (2017) allows condominium associations to opt out of installing sprinklers either in hallways or individual units so long as they meet the minimum requirements of fire safety evaluation forms that would be filled out by a licensed architect or engineer and then submitted to the Honolulu Fire Department.

And those who choose to opt out could still end up paying more to make other safety improvements necessary to pass the evaluations, said Assistant Fire Chief Socrates Bratakos.

The vote on Wednesday was 8-1. Councilman Ikaika Anderson, the lone “no” vote, said he philosophically opposes the idea of requiring property owners to install sprinklers if they preferred to accept the risk of living without them.

Councilwoman Carol Fukunaga, who authored the final language, said her version was a compromise designed to address safety concerns while recognizing that requiring sprinklers could create huge financial burdens for the building associations.

“Different buildings have different conditions,” Fukunaga said after the meeting. “What may work for one building is not necessarily the solution for another building.”

State and city government officials offered some breaks for those installing sprinklers but they were not enough to properly compensate those building associations, she said.

The bill was first introduced by former Council Chairman Ron Menor on behalf of Mayor Kirk Caldwell on July 18, 2017, four days after the massive fire at the Marco Polo complex that resulted in the deaths of four people and left scores of units uninhabitable.

Fire officials said the blaze would not have spread so quickly if the building had had sprinklers.

But while there was a strong call for mandatory sprinklers, building owners argued that forcing them to install sprinklers was not only unnecessary, it could force some of them to lose their homes.

HFD officials estimated the cost for property owners to install sprinklers in an entire building, including individual units, at between $8,000 and $22,000. The estimated cost to retrofit them in common areas was between $5,000 and $10,000 each.

About 368 residential towers, totaling about 38,000 to 39,000 units, do not have sprinklers, according to Fire Department estimates. All were built before 1975, which was when the city first mandated sprinklers in all new residential high-rises.

Fire Chief Manuel Neves said he would have preferred a law without opt-outs. “Of course the Fire Department wanted sprinklers everywhere, in every building — we want them in your automobiles as well, he said, drawing a laugh. “But we’re happy. We’re going to make our community safer.”

Neves noted that the city adopted the law requiring all hotels to be retrofitted with sprinklers in 1983 in response to the 1980 MGM Grand Hotel fire in Las Vegas that resulted in 85 deaths, and then required all commercial high-rises to be retrofitted in 2002 following the 2000 fire at the First Interstate Building on South King Street, which did not result in any deaths but sent two firefighters to the hospital for smoke inhalation.

Jane Sugimura, president of the Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners, said her organization supports the final draft. “We believe that the language of the (final draft) reflects the flexibility that we have been advocating for these many months,” she said in written testimony.

“We believe that the life safety evaluation that will be implemented as part of the (final draft) will ensure that high-rise residential buildings will be safer for the residents living in those buildings and for the firefighters who are required to enter them to fight the fires,” Sugimura said.

But Bratakos, who heads the Fire Prevention Bureau, said after the meeting that opting out of installing sprinklers would require a building association to adhere to other requirements in order to pass the life safety evaluation — which in total could cost more than sprinklers.

That likely will include requiring each unit have “solid, fire-rated doors” that close automatically. “If you opt out of sprinklers, there’s pretty much no way you can pass the evaluation unless you have those doors.”

Many of those check-off items will already be required to meet the Fire Code, he said.

“You’re going to have an engineer or architect walk and make sure that you have the right kind of carpet and paint in the hallway, with the right kind of fire resistance, you’ve got to have walls intact in between the corridors and the units, whether they’re concrete or drywall,” he said. “You’ve got to have stairs that are working properly, stairwells either outside or sealed or they’re vented properly, you’ve got to have your egress route all the way from the unit to the stairs clear, no obstacles, nothing, or you won’t pass.”

If the bill is signed by Caldwell, affected building associations will have three years to conduct the evaluation forms and six years to complete necessary improvements.

Those who opt out also will be required to display signs on their buildings showing that they do not have sprinklers. The declaration also must be made on real estate disclosure documents.

The 150 high-rises affected are those that are 10 stories or taller and do not have outdoor hallways, which are deemed safer than buildings that feature enclosed hallways.