Tower collapse risks extremely low, but Hawaii — like Florida — has extra building maintenance challenges

A spotlight is shining on maintenance practices for tall buildings after last month’s deadly Florida condominium collapse, especially in coastal states including Hawaii where corrosion from sea spray, rising tides and groundwater could cause worries about structural integrity.

Local structural engineers say people living and working in Hawaii high-rises shouldn’t be automatically concerned about a disaster similar to the oceanfront Champlain Towers South condo collapsing in Surfside, Fla., happening here because occupied buildings collapsing for any reason are extremely rare.

Still, these experts say it’s up to building owners and the public to pay attention to — and address — maintenance issues such as cracks, rust and flooding that could be signs of building distress.

It’s common for building owners to defer maintenance because repairs can be costly. But Steve Baldridge, president of structural engineering firm BASE, with offices in Honolulu, Chicago, Florida, Guam and India, said there’s a good reason why fixing things that are deteriorating shouldn’t be put off.

“It only gets worse,” he said.

Gary Chock, president of Honolulu structural engineering company Martin Chock &Carden, said evaluations by reputable structural engineering firms should never be taken lightly.

“Generally speaking, if we say something is serious, we mean it,” he said. “Don’t wait.”

Buildings in Hawaii — including housing, hotels and offices — face heightened maintenance challenges because the surrounding salty ocean environment can penetrate concrete to rust internal steel bar reinforcements. Buildings with steel structures also face corrosion challenges.

For decades, managers of Aloha Stadium struggled to combat rust and keep Hawaii’s largest event venue in safe shape until giving up late last year and prohibiting use of the facility’s 50,000 seats.

And in 2016, one person died and one was critically injured in a fall at Ala Moana Center when a railing that had rusted in its concrete support base gave way.

In Florida, no definitive cause yet has been determined for the partial collapse of Champlain South, where 24 people were confirmed dead on Saturday and 121 were still missing.

However, contractors and residents working and living at the property have noted in interviews with several news organizations that structural elements of the property had issues with water intrusion, concrete cracking and rusting metal bars reinforcing concrete structures.

Some of these reports cite a history of water seeping through a parking deck ceiling as well as standing water on the floor of the building’s basement parking level.

In 2018, an engineering firm retained to produce a structural survey of the 12-story Champlain South building wrote in a report posted online by Surfside’s town clerk: “Abundant cracking and spalling of varying degrees was observed in the concrete columns, beams, and walls. Several sizable spalls were noted in both the topside of the entrance drive ramp and underside of the pool/entrance drive/planter slabs, which included instances with exposed, deteriorating rebar. Though some of this damage is minor, most of the concrete deterioration needs to be repaired in a timely fashion.”

The report also concluded that waterproofing below the building’s pool deck and entrance drive was beyond its useful life and needed replacement that would be extremely expensive and disruptive to building occupants.

“The failed waterproofing is causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas,” the report said. “Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially.”

The survey is a requirement by various counties in Florida to have owners of major buildings obtain structural and electrical safety inspections submitted to government officials for review and approval every 10 years starting when a building becomes 40 or 41 years old.

Champlain South was built in 1981, making it 40 this year.

Hawaii has no such building safety inspection requirement.

Chock questioned the usefulness of such an arbitrary government requirement, and said maintenance issues with buildings can arise sooner or later than 40 years depending on design, materials, location and maintenance.

After the deadly 2016 Ala Moana railing collapse, the Honolulu City Council considered two bills in 2017 that would have required safety inspections every five years for thousands of residential and commercial buildings on Oahu.

The measures stalled after receiving push-back from the City Department of Planning and Permitting and an organization representing condo owners.

DPP can respond to public complaints contending that a building is unsafe, initially by inspecting the property.

If DPP determines a building is not safe, it can order the owner to evacuate the building, if necessary, and mandate repairs or demolition. If an owner fails to comply, the agency can have the work done at city expense and place a lien on the property.

One high-profile case of a major occupied Hawaii building being deemed unsafe involved part of a University of Hawaii College of Business Administration complex built in 1971.

One of the complex’s seven buildings that rose three to six stories on the Manoa campus was closed and demolished in 1980 after several years of attempted repairs could not prevent floors, windows, walls, pillars and other things from cracking due to upheaval and subsidence of land below the building and water intrusion.

A structural engineering firm’s analysis concluded that the building known as F-tower was in danger of structural failure but not collapse.

Wai-Fah Chen, a structural engineering expert and former dean of UH’s College of Engineering, said unexpected earth movement including sinkholes can undermine buildings but that water often is a negative force at play either underground or on the surface.

“Water is a troublemaker,” he said. “It’s like fighting with nature.”

Chen said cracks in buildings with concrete superstructures are warning signs that some kind of problem exists and needs to be addressed.

Yet despite this, in Chen’s view the biggest concern for people living in older high-rises here should be fire because fire sprinkler systems weren’t mandated in residential towers until 1975.

Baldridge said the same thing, and added: “Fires (in high-rises) happen all the time across the U.S. Collapses don’t.”