Seven years ago, after a deadly condominium fire, the Honolulu City Council moved to mandate sprinklers in every residential high-rise, with the premise that sprinklers save lives.  

Then came outcry from condo owners and associations, who said the requirement would be prohibitively expensive. The council acquiesced, and under a compromise, buildings could either install sprinklers or pass a fire safety inspection that looks at things like exit routes and the presence of an alarm system. 

Today, hundreds of Honolulu’s old residential high-rises still aren’t mandated to be retrofitted with fire sprinklers. And the council is preparing to water down the compromise version, giving condominium owners and associations an extra eight years to comply with the fire safety law.

“It’s only going to get more expensive,” president and owner of Insurance Associates Inc., Sue Savio, said. “It really bothers me that we keep pushing the can down the road.” 

The Honolulu City Council’s Public Safety Committee will discuss Bill 55, which includes the amendments to the fire code, on Tuesday.

Few Buildings Pass Inspection

Fire sprinklers have been mandated in high-rise condominium buildings since 1975. But a lot of Honolulu’s high-rises were built before then during the post-statehood construction boom, so the vast majority of them lack sprinklers.

Retrofitting is one option. The City Council considered mandating this during the immediate aftermath of the Marco Polo fire, but decided against it because many condo owners and associations complained that it would cost too much to install sprinklers.

The exact amount varies by building. Marco Polo — the 36-story building that caught flame in 2017, resulting in four deaths and the council’s renewed interest in fire safety — installed fire sprinklers in 2021 for $6 million, or about $10,500 per unit. The price at Kahala Towers would be about $4 million to $5 million, or about $17,000 to $21,500 per unit.

As an alternative to installing sprinklers, the city’s 2018 law allows condo associations to instead pass what’s called a fire and life safety evaluation, which can check for emergency power for elevators and the flammability of wall paint, among other things.

Of about 300 high-rises, according to the city’s most recent report from August, just over 20 have an acceptable level of fire safety. The city’s 2018 fire safety law gave buildings until May 2024 to receive a passing grade. Council members extended it a year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Then they extended it again, giving buildings another few months to conduct the inspection and another five years to pass it. Council members will now decide whether to extend the deadline another eight years.

If the latest amendment is enacted, the original 2024 deadline to pass inspection will have been extended to 2038.

Things are heating up at the council, where council members Andria Tupola and Val Okimoto introduced versions of the latest extensions for the city’s fire code update. The Honolulu Fire Department testified in opposition during the full council’s monthly meeting in October.

“We have identified 288 high-rise buildings in Honolulu that are not protected by automatic fire sprinklers, and have not seen an acceptable score in the fire and life safety evaluations,” Battalion Chief Pao-Chi Hwang testified. “We believe that pushing the timeline for compliance back will not address the safety concerns of these high-rise buildings.” 

Tupola said that, in addition to extending the deadline, she was trying to move the timeline along by requiring building owners to come up with a plan for passing the inspection by 2030. She also proposed to give building associations tax credits for installing fire sprinklers, which she said could help with their insurance rates. Currently, only individual owners can get tax credits. 

“I don’t want to just keep hearing about this bill and talking about it forever until my eyes pop out,” she said in an interview last month. “I want it to be where there are solutions, we’re doing some incentives,” and building associations feel it makes sense financially.

The head of Insurance Associates likes the idea of helping with condo insurance. Monthly insurance costs could approximately halve if fire sprinklers are installed, Savio said, even as the sprinklers increase the value of the building.

“They can offer you this lower rate because they know it’s going to put out the fire, and they’re going to have much less damage than they would’ve if we didn’t have the sprinklers,” she said.

In contrast, she said, just passing the fire and life safety evaluation won’t do anything to the insurance rate because the building’s potential damage is still high.

In keeping with Honolulu’s history on the issue, the bill would give building associations another extension to install sprinklers — in areas other than common areas, until 2048.