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It’s been six years since a fire tore through the Marco Polo condominium in Honolulu, killing four people and prompting a new local ordinance requiring existing high-rise residential buildings to beef up their life-safety systems, which includes installing fire sprinklers.
Automatic fire sprinkler systems detect heat and reduce the heat, flames and smoke – or put out the fire – with water before the fire can spread or cause too much damage to life or property. Since the July 2017 fire, the 36-story Marco Polo has been retrofitted with an automatic fire sprinkler system, at a cost of more than $6 million.
And despite the new law, it’s unlikely there will be a rush to install fire sprinkler systems this year or next. One reason is because the law gives building owners, including condominium associations of apartment owners, another seven years to come up with an acceptable life-safety evaluation and nearly 15 years to complete the installation.
The updated City and County Honolulu Fire Code, ordinance 22-02, requires buildings built before 1975 – when fire sprinklers were first required to be installed in new high-rise buildings – to undergo a life-safety evaluation by a third-party licensed design professional by Aug. 31, 2022. In a report to the City Council last fall, Honolulu Fire Chief Sheldon Hao said 302 buildings submitted life-safety evaluations; only 21 received an acceptable score.
Those 281 buildings that had an unacceptable score have until May 3, 2030, to bring their properties up to an acceptable level of safety or declare that they intend to install a fire sprinkler system, which must be completed by May 3, 2038, says Fire Capt. Kendall Ching of the Honolulu Fire Department’s Fire Prevention Bureau.
“They have a choice of whether they want to get an acceptable level of safety or sprinkler their building and that’s obviously the AOAO’s decision,” Ching says.
Ching says fire sprinklers are the gold standard for building safety, because they snuff out fires before they can kill or cause extensive damage to property.
“These fire sprinklers are designed … to go off when the fire is small, so it puts out the fire,” he says. “Sprinklers are very important. That’s why in the new building code, in all high rises, sprinklers are required since 1975.”
There are other reasons buildings haven’t been clamoring to install sprinklers since the Marco Polo fire. For one thing, it’s expensive. Most condo associations already have tight budgets and are dealing with other, more urgent issues, such as replacing aging, leaking cast iron pipes and concrete spalling.
Adding a multimillion-dollar sprinkler project without assessing condo owners tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars is generally not desirable. The Legislature sought to address that with a bill this year that requires condo associations to add sprinklers to their reserve studies – annual documents that analyze the current estimate of the costs of repairing and replacing building components, from the roof to concrete walkways to elevators and washing machines. The reserve study not only estimates the costs but also how the association will pay for them. Most condos maintain a reserve fund – a sort of savings account – funded by a portion of owners’ monthly maintenance fee payments and used to forecast the cash flow to cover major expenses.
Saving for a multimillion-dollar sprinkler project would take a lot more than 15 years without drastically raising maintenance fees, so lawmakers added a provision to Senate Bill 855 that allows associations to forecast using a loan or a special assessment to pay for “life safety components or installation.” Gov. Josh Green didn’t include SB 855 on his list of measures he intends to veto, which means he intends to either sign it into law or allow it to become law without his signature.
Another reason it may take some time for buildings to install sprinkler systems is that it’s not that simple. And the costs can vary widely for each building.
Tom Roselli, GM & VP, HCA Consulting Group International | Photo: courtesy of Tom Roselli
Tom Roselli, GM & VP, HCA Consulting Group International | Photo: courtesy of Tom Roselli
“I don’t think people really fully understand what goes into retrofitting these buildings for the sprinklers,” says Tom Roselli, GM and VP of HCA Consulting Group International, which does engineering consulting and construction management. Roselli previously worked with insurance companies and was a claims adjuster on the Marco Polo fire.
There are a number of professions involved in retrofitting a high-rise building with fire sprinklers, including architects and engineers who have to figure out where to put all the new pipes that will carry the water to the sprinkler heads in common areas and apartments.
“From the get go, when you’re talking about a retrofit, you’re calling on a fire engineer to design the system,” Roselli says. “You need a civil engineer to figure out how it’s going to tie into the Board of Water Supply and whether or not there’s enough water pressure to support the building.”
There’s also the logistics of where the pipes and the sprinkler heads will go, and whether or not to put a dropped ceiling in to cover the pipes or build soffits or use decorative molding or boxes. And then environmental consultants need to weigh in about potential exposure or removal of hazardous materials, such as asbestos, during construction. Then there are the pipe fitters, electricians and other trades involved in the installation.
“The sprinkler system is really a fraction of the cost when it comes down to the design, the environmental permitting and all of the engineering,” says Roselli.
Jordan Holley, fire sprinkler division manager at Dorvin D. Leis Co. | Photo: courtesy of Jordan Holley
Jordan Holley, fire sprinkler division manager at Dorvin D. Leis Co. | Photo: courtesy of Jordan Holley
The Dorvin D. Leis Co. Fire Sprinkler Division, which has its own licensed engineers on staff, took on a lot of the work for the Marco Polo sprinkler installation, including acting as the general contractor, says Division Manager Jordan Holley.
“In future jobs, we’re going to team up with a general contractor that can help manage and facilitate all of the trades, which would include underground engineering, any architectural features that they may want,” says Holley. “So in the future, we will have a general manager help facilitate and help coordinate and manage those other trades.”
Holley says the Marco Polo installation began in April 2019 but took longer than planned because the start of the Covid-19 pandemic put everything on hold for several months since residents couldn’t vacate their units during the day for the work to get done. Work was also suspended over the holidays, but the job, which included a new fire alarm system, was eventually completed in October 2021.
The firm is currently in the permitting phase for another high-rise retrofit it expects to start later this summer. Other projects are in the design phase but haven’t gone out to bid yet.
Holley says the biggest lesson his firm learned from the job was the importance of working with the building’s management team to coordinate the work and try to minimize the impact to residents.
Although the deadlines to comply with the new fire code are years away, that doesn’t mean buildings should wait, especially since they’re now required to plan a fire sprinkler retrofit under SB 855, which will become law this year.
HFD’s Ching recommends people check out the resources on the HFD website, which includes links to the fire code and facts about fire sprinklers, as well as the list of high-rise buildings that need to be in compliance with the law.
“The sooner that you’re in compliance, the lower your risk and hazards,” says HFD’s Ching. “The faster you rectify deficiencies, the better and lower your risk of liability.”
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