A bill under consideration by the Honolulu City Council would extend the deadline for condominiums to install fire sprinklers to 2033 — three years beyond the current deadline established in response to the deadly 2017 Marco Polo fire.
Bill 37, introduced by Councilmember Carol Fukunaga, also allows buildings to apply for a year’s extension and provides more time for condos that opt not to install sprinklers to pass “life safety evaluations.” The measure passed unanimously out of second reading at last week’s full Council meeting and is expected to be heard in the Public Infrastructure and Technology Committee on Wednesday.
Fukunaga, whose district
includes portions of urban
Honolulu, said many of the condominiums without fire sprinklers are older buildings already in need of costly maintenance and upgrades. She noted that condo owner associations also are having difficulty getting estimates from contractors for fire safety improvements due to national supply-chain problems.
“This is all against the backdrop of most buildings already facing pretty significant ongoing maintenance issues,” Fukunaga said.
Four people died in the July 14, 2017, fire at the Marco Polo condominium, which was built in 1971, before the city began mandating sprinklers in high-rises. In the wake of the deadly blaze, the city passed an ordinance requiring residential buildings over 10 stories to undergo a fire safety assessment within three years and to pass the evaluation within six years.
Subsequent legislation in 2018 allowed condo associations to forgo the safety evaluation if fire sprinklers are installed.
Buildings that opt to install sprinklers currently have until spring 2030 to complete the projects but may apply for an extension to 2033. However, buildings 20 floors and taller must install sprinklers in their common areas by spring 2026, and buildings with 10 to 19 floors must have sprinklers in common areas by spring 2028.
Fukunaga’s bill would get rid of the tiered deadline for fire sprinkler installation in common rooms and extend the deadline for passing life safety evaluations to spring 2025.
At the time the fire safety laws were passed, the Honolulu Fire Department identified 377 residential high-rises, with an estimated 50,000 residents, as being without fire sprinklers.
One of those buildings is The Contessa in Moiliili. Tom Sheeran, who has lived in the 37-story building for 20 years, worries about his elderly neighbors who cannot afford the cost of the sprinklers. The building management has estimated installation costs of between $25,000 and $30,000 per unit, he said.
“You’ve got people who are on limited income who can’t get loans, and people who have just bought in who got the biggest loan they possibly could, have no equity and can’t get another loan,” Sheeran said.
“Personally, we’re not in as bad shape as some of the people that we’re concerned about. But we want to represent some of those people who would certainly be having a difficult time, and some people would have an impossible time.”
Owner associations by law are required to reserve a portion of residents’ monthly maintenance fees for major improvements, but the funds often don’t cover the full costs of the projects.
That was the case four years ago, Sheeran said, when residents at The Contessa were billed $45,000 per unit for plumbing work, concrete repairs and repainting the building.
BUILDINGS that opt for life safety evaluations instead of installing sprinklers still face potential costly upgrades to pass the 17-point assessment, which covers everything from mobility within buildings to elevator emergency power.
One provision in the evaluation requires fixing vertical openings, such as electrical wiring shafts or air vents that run vertically through older buildings — a requirement that would cause most buildings to fail the evaluation.
The spread of fire through vertical openings is a major threat that is mitigated by installation of special fire-rated walls with self-closing, fire-rated doors and other measures.
The latest HFD report shows that only eight of the 209 buildings that have submitted life safety evaluations have passed. Vertical-opening issues accounted for 86 of the failures.
Jane Sugimura, president of the Hawaii Council of Community Associations, who helped develop the evaluation, said it should be revisited because risk is assessed the same for all buildings. For example, a building with 20 units per floor has the same requirements as a condominium with only two units. The evaluation also doesn’t consider that certain building layouts may make it easier for residents to evacuate and first responders to enter, she said.
“According to the matrix, you get judged the same way and it doesn’t take into account those nuances,” Sugimura said.
“The key thing that we were concentrating on was how to make a building safer for the first responders to go into the building and deal with the emergency. And also to allow people to exit the emergency situation.”
Sugimura said life safety evaluations were meant as an option for buildings that didn’t want to do sprinklers, mostly because of cost.
“Most of it is money, because nobody’s got money in their budget for fire sprinklers,” she said.
Further complicating the decision-making for condominiums is the need for insurance. Buildings that opt not to install fire sprinklers can expect to see their insurance premiums rise at least 30%, according to Sue Savio, president of Insurance Associates. She warned it’s only a matter of time until buildings without fire sprinklers see even higher premium increases, and might eventually become uninsurable.
“If you’re a nonsprinklered building and you’re with an insurance company, you better stay with them because nobody’s gonna quote on it because they don’t want any more nonsprinkler buildings on their books,” she said.
“But at some point in time, when there is another death and insurance companies say, ‘We’re out of here, we’re not going to write nonsprinklered buildings on unless you prove to us you’re going to put a sprinkler system within the next couple of years,’ then you’ll be seeing huge increases.”
As of Aug. 25, there have been 239 high-rise fires since the deadly Marco Polo blaze. Of those fires, which resulted in two deaths, 190 involved structures that did not have automatic fire sprinklers throughout the building, according to HFD.
Savio’s advice to condo associations is to install fire sprinklers. She said she’s voted to put them in the buildings where she owns units.
“I’m sure I’m one of the few that are voting for yes,” Savio said. “But I know that if we don’t do it now, we will have to do at some point, and it will only be more painful.”
Fukunaga said she will continue to work with condominiums on the issue. A previous measure she introduced, Bill 35, which would exempt condominium owners in buildings that are making fire safety improvements from property taxes for a period of time, stalled after first reading.
She encouraged condominium owners to also seek legislation at the state level.
“This is still a work in progress. We have a lot more ground to cover,” she said.
