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The Marco Polo high rise apartment building as seen from the Honolulu Stadium State Park, five days after a deadly fire on July 14. A woman who says she lost all of her possessions in last summer’s deadly Marco Polo high-rise fire is suing the apartment owners’ association, the building’s current and past property managers, and the owners of the unit where the fire started.
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A woman who says she lost all of her possessions in last summer’s deadly Marco Polo high-rise fire is suing the apartment owners’ association, the building’s current and past property managers, and the owners of the unit where the fire started.
In a lawsuit filed in state court Wednesday, Evita
Gosselin says she was the tenant of unit 2712 on July 14 when the fire broke out in unit 2602. She says the fire spread to her rented apartment, destroying virtually all of her personal property, furnishings, clothing and
effects, including invaluable and irreplaceable personal memorabilia.
Three residents of other 26th-floor units died in the fire. A 32nd-floor resident died in the hospital three weeks later.
The Honolulu Fire Department says the fire caused more than $100 million in damage, but was unable to determine the cause.
Gosselin says the Marco Polo’s owners and managers failed to take measures to prevent the kind of disaster that happened last summer, including installing a fire sprinkler system, even though previous fires revealed the inadequacy of the building’s safety systems and fire retardation and prevention measures.
The Marco Polo was built in 1971, before the city required new high-rises to have sprinkler systems.
None of the defendants named in the lawsuit could be reached for comment.
