Mayor Kirk Caldwell on Tuesday vetoed a bill that would have provided condo owners an extra two years to comply with requirements of a fire safety law enacted in the wake of the fatal Marco Polo fire in 2017.

The City Council last week by an 8-0 vote passed Bill 72, which gives condo owners an extra two years to conduct a safety evaluation and implement its findings.

After the Marco Polo condo fire, which killed four people in a building without sprinklers, Caldwell proposed requiring older condos above a certain height to install sprinklers if they didn’t already have them.

About 370 condo complexes on Oahu do not have sprinkler systems. The buildings were constructed before 1975, the year such systems were required in new projects.

Because of cost concerns, the Council in April adopted a measure that gives condos the option of hiring professionals to do safety evaluations and then taking actions to comply with the findings. The evaluations would have to be done within three years and compliance steps completed within six.

Bill 72 would have added two more years to those deadlines.

Caldwell cited the safety of high-rise residents and firefighters to justify his veto and asked the Council not to override it. Six votes are needed for an override.

A two-year delay is “way too long, way too much danger, too much risk for everyone involved,” Caldwell said at a news conference.

Standing before a group of firefighters, Caldwell said, “Every day is a day of risk for those who live in high-rises without sprinklers.”

The mayor cited a high-rise fire just last week that was confined to the unit where the blaze started because the project has sprinklers. The Waikiki Banyan blaze, which started in a microwave, caused an estimated $320,000 in damage to the unit and its contents, according to the Honolulu Fire Department.

“It could’ve been a repeat of Marco Polo all over again,” Caldwell said.

The Marco Polo fire caused more than $100 million in damage and spread well beyond the unit where the blaze started, eventually destroying 30 apartments and damaging dozens more. It also has triggered litigation that could push the total financial costs higher.

Caldwell described the date of the Marco Polo fire as “one of the worst days of my life as mayor.”

Since the fire, Marco Polo owners have approved the installation of sprinklers.

Caldwell said the current deadlines to comply with the evaluation requirements are fair and reasonable. Under the law, the evaluations must be completed by May 2021 and compliance achieved by May 2024. A condo could opt to install sprinklers to achieve compliance.

HFD Chief Manuel Neves applauded the mayor’s veto, saying additional delays would mean more risks for firefighters and condo residents.

Some condo owners may be willing to take those risks, Neves told reporters. But “our firefighters don’t have that choice,” he added, saying they will respond whether the building has sprinklers or not.

Council Chairman Ernie Martin said in a statement that the mayor has chosen to ignore or dismiss “the realities of what condominium owners have to face with retrofitting their homes with a fire sprinkler system. If he did, he might understand the extreme financial hardship his mandatory retrofit bills would impose on these homeowners, many of whom are elderly and living on a fixed income.”

Councilwoman Carol Fukunaga, who authored Bill 72, said in a statement that she worked with condo residents, industry experts and HFD to draft legislation she described as a balanced solution, given that condo associations and the Fire Department have yet to agree on standards to determine whether buildings need to be retrofitted.

Fukunaga said additional information is expected from HFD on Dec. 1, and that could result in the need for a shorter extension if an agreement is reached on standards.

“Given that we are so close to December, I feel the veto override was not necessary as we continue to move towards a compromise,” she added.