 is Stink Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. Welcome to the Kondo Insider program on everything you ever wanted to know about owning, buying, selling a condominium and all the aspects that related to it. I'm your host Scott Shirley and I am pleased to announce today and honored to have as our guest a familiar face here on the Kondo Insider, Jane Sugimura, who is the president and I always get this messed up. The president of the Hawaii Council of Association Apartment Owners, better known as HCCA, right? And she is our guest today and one of the reasons we have her as our guest today is because of the issue of the fire sprinklers in the condominiums. We just had a board meeting last week where we were discussing some aspects and both Richard and Amri and I thought it would be appropriate time to have you on again to discuss the issues that are coming up at least the county council in regards to the mandate on sprinkler systems. So I'm letting you lose. Okay. Okay. Well, the fire, the residential fire safety advisory committee released its report yesterday to the city council and I've got it right here. It's a big fat report and it's online. So it's public. I understand it's on the city council website. So anybody who wants to look at it, it is there. And I got that email today and I haven't even finished reading through it. So yeah, this is the recommendation of the committee to the city council and this is in connection with Mayor Caldwell's bill 69 and that bill called for mandatory retrofitting of all high rise buildings in the city and county of Hollywood over 75 feet tall. That's about seven stories. Okay. Now, and that bill called for retrofitting within five years. Within five years. Within five years. Right. And I and others testified at council hearings saying that number one, that's not doable. You can't, there's not enough companies in the state of Hawaii to retrofit 361 buildings in five years. And, and even if there were, I mean, not one of the kind of minimums on the list, the 361, have any money in their budget to pay for retrofitting, which costs millions of dollars. And it's like, and even if they, you know, and even if they could, I mean, where would they get, where would they get it? They have to get it from the unit owners and the unit owners would have to be specially assessed because they don't have it in their budget. And so, and there's, and if they had to go out and borrow the money, there aren't enough banks in the state to loan 361 buildings, you know, money to do the retrofitting. So, so I think everybody agreed that it was not doable. And so the committee has come back with some recommendations, most of which I agree with. I was a member of the panel for Hawaii Council, and I agree with a lot of the stuff in the recommendations, but I disagree on a really important point, you know, and that's what I'm here to talk about. Well, let's go back to the five-year issue. I remember when that came up about having to be done within five years, and a lot of us knew immediately that was not doable. But Richard Emory had done some research and looked at other states that had mandated, and one state had mandated five years, and 15 years later they're still doing it. So, it proved a point that you cannot do it in five years. Is that still in the the bill or is that taken out? No, that was taken out. The bill now calls for compliance, which means compliance with this, the retrofitting requirement, because it does start off with the premise that all buildings subject to the act shall be retrofitted with sprinklers, but now you have 12 years to comply. But let me just get to the point that the recommendations that the report makes. It starts with the premise that all buildings have to be retrofitted, except if you come under an exemption. So you start with number one, everybody has to be retrofitted if you're over 75 feet tall. The first exemption, if you have no interior corridor, then no matter how high your building is, no matter how large your building is, you're exempt from the retrofitting requirement. If your building is 10 stories or less than 10 stories, which means if it's eight or nine stories, even if it has an interior corridor, you're exempt. So in the report, there's a list of 361 buildings. And in column J, there's an item that says interior corridor and a Y for yes and an N for no. And so if you look at it, about 210 buildings have no interior corridors are below 10 stories. So they're exempt. That leaves about 150 buildings that are now subject to the possible retrofitting. And what the recommendation is, is that all buildings, including the exempt ones, have to go through this life safety evaluation. And this is something, this is a process that was not created by anybody here locally. It was created on the mainland. I don't know what jurisdiction came up with it, but it has been adopted by the National Fire Safety Association. And it's recognized by international building code organizations. And what it does, it's a process by which you examine the building to determine if it's safe. And they look at certain factors. Some factors you can change and some factors you can't. One factor you can't change is how big is the building, right? Is it 10 stories? Is it 20 stories? Is it 40 stories? The taller the building, the more dangerous it is. In other words, it takes you longer to get people out of the building. And it's harder for firefighters to get into the building and fight the fire. So how tall a building is affects the safety. Another thing is compartmentalization. In other words, if a fire starts in an apartment unit, will it be contained in that unit or will it spread? So you look at your walls. Are they concrete? Are they masonry? Are they drywall? If they're concrete, then it gets a higher point. If it's drywall, it gets a lower point because it's more dangerous because the possibility of the fire getting through that wall are greater if it's not concrete or masonry. And another thing is, buildings have these vertical openings, like where you put a pipe or a conduit and it goes up through the floors, right? And when the building is built, because the hole that the boring that you make to put in the pipe or the conduit is not the same size, you have to fill in the hole, the opening. And after 30, 40 years, like most of these buildings are, that seal goes away or deteriorates. Deteriorates, yes. And now you have a hole. It's called a vertical opening, right? And so if you have vertical openings that have where the seal has gone away, that means if you have a fire, it's going to travel through that. Travel through those holes, yeah. To get to the higher upper floors. And so that makes your building riskier. And also what this life safety evaluation looks at is your elevator system and your alarm system. And most condos have elevator renovations in their budget now. And most, a lot of them have not done it, mainly because it's a huge item. It's over a million dollars. And so they've been putting it off. But every building that I know that is a high rise has money socked away for elevators. Yeah, elevators for elevators. For elevator renovations. If they renovate those elevators, they got to bring everything up to code and quoting the alarm system. And that means that your elevator will talk to your alarm system, your alarm system will talk to your smoke detectors. And everything works together. They're all talking to each other. Right now, they're not. And a lot of buildings because, you know, they're old. They're kind of jury rigging. A part breaks. And so they put it up in the park here. And they may not be the right part. But it's all jury rigging. And so now, if they have to, you know, upgrade their, renovate their elevators, they're going to have to upgrade everything else. And that would, in a life safety evaluation, that would give them more points. And also what is in the life safety evaluation is they want to know how you get out of the building. Like, if you're in a building and you have to get out, do you have two exits? Do you have a stairwell on both sides? And how far is it? Is it 50 feet? If it's 50 feet for you to get from your place to the stairwell to get out of the building, that means you would get plus points. If it's 200 feet and it takes you longer, that's more dangerous. That would give you minus points. You know, when we were discussing that aspect last week, I was thinking of the old building that I used to live in. Granted, it was on Maui. But we actually had three fire exits, one in the middle and one at either end of the building. What made it more interesting? Half the building was exterior hallways and the other half was interior hallways. I wonder how they would handle something like that. I don't know. I mean, they would have to make an adjustment, but you know. Part of the building passes, part of it doesn't. But you know, and this is the kinds of things they look at. And you can see how some things you can't change because the structure of the building, you can't change it. There are other things you can change. Like, you can install smoke detectors, you can upgrade your fire alarm system, you can upgrade your elevators, you can fill in the holes around your vertical openings. And another thing is they want to know what kind of doors you have. You have solid doors. We heard at the Marco Polo they had louver doors. I don't know what that means, but I guess that's holes in the doorway. And that was not permitted unless that's a second door. Unless you have a fire door and a second door was a louver door. Actually, I know of an association where a friend of mine lived and that's exactly what they had. They had a sliding pocket door of a louver door so they could open their regular door and then slide that louver door so they could get ventilation through. And to me that, especially after Marco Polo, it made me more aware of how dangerous that might be. If you have a fire in your unit, it can go right out that door. Right. And another thing with the door is you have to have a closer. A closer is that metal thing on top of the door that makes it close automatically. And so if you don't have them, then that association can put closers on their unit doors because that will give them plus points because that's what's required under the life safety evaluation in the matrix that we'll talk about later on. So first of all, you have solid wood doors that are fire rated and I think it's 30 minutes or something like that. And then in the corridor, in the public areas of the building, the fire rating is on the door jam. Yeah. It's somehow fixed. I don't know whether it's glued or screwed in, but there's a plate. I've seen it. I have as well. Yeah. And so it's in the door jam and that will tell you how long that door is rated. So these are things that the inspectors will be looking for. And so if you don't have the correct doors, you can replace them. It's cheaper than doing retrofitting. Yes. Yeah. So these are things that I think are important. And that's why I think adopting the life safety evaluation for all high-rise buildings is a good thing for the city to adopt. And that way, all the buildings would go through the process and be evaluated. And they can see where they're deficient and then they can do their upgrading or replacement or fixing and bring everything up to increase their score. And I agree with you on that. I think this is an important aspect for the boards at these associations and the owners to have something that they can actually look at and go around their building, not just the issues that have been popping up, but it'll help them in the long run as well, budgeting-wise as well. Right. And the boogeyman in the back room is, if you don't do this, you're going to do retrofitting. Retrofitting means millions of dollars and special assessments and all those bad things. And I think most buildings would prefer not to do that. And this is a process that allows them to have their buildings inspected. And it's going to be a standard form. So that means that your building is going to be evaluated in the same matrix as my building. And the people who will be doing would be professional engineers and architects. And they will be given free training by the city. And the good thing about it is the matrix that they use to, the tool that they use to actually record the measurements of the values of all these things has been prepared by the city. It's going to be part of the ordinance. So that means that the people who do the inspections have to use this form. And it's going to be given to the inspectors for free. Oh, that's wonderful. It's going to be free. So that means that the associations are not paying for software. I mean, when the inspectors come to their projects to do the inspection, the associations will only be paying for the professional time that the inspectors spend doing the evaluation. Well, that's good information. And we're going to take a quick break. And then when we come back, we'll continue on with the issue of retrofitting, et cetera. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Good evening. This is me, Angus McTech, the longtime host and star of Hibachi Talk. Think Tech is important to our community because we bring all kinds of cool ideas and I bring gadgets to the show. So you got to watch it for sure. But for the first time, Think Tech Hawaii is participating in an online web-based fundraising campaign that raised $40,000. Give thanks to Think Tech. We'll run only during the month of November and you can help. Please donate what you can that Think Tech in Hawaii can continue to be public awareness and promote civic engagement through free programming like mine and I'm in charge. I've already made my donation and this would be hard to get disgust when to make a donation, but I already did. Please send in your tax deductible contribution by going to this website. Thanks for Think Tech dot Cosbox dot com. Say that three times fast. Closing on behalf of the community enriched by Think Tech Hawaii's 30 plus weekly shows. Thank you and we're mahalo for watching Think Tech and your generosity. Welcome back to the condo insider. I'm here with my guest Jane Sugimura and we've been discussing basically the county bill in regards to retrofitting of sprinklers and things like that and it's amazing how much time flies so I want to make sure that in the last section of this program you have the opportunity to go over a lot of what we've discussed in some of our meetings over the last week or so and so I'm throwing it right back at you. Okay, well you know and in fact if we can have the matrix, can we have the matrix shown there? This is a matrix. This is a matrix that all of the inspectors will be using to inspect the buildings and as you can see it's a spreadsheet. It's an Excel spreadsheet and the values that are on the spreadsheet can change and this is you know something that will probably be debated in the hearings and by the way there is a hearing on Tuesday November 14th before the legal, I mean the executive matters and legal affairs committee of the city council and that's at Honolulu-Hawley on the second floor committee room at one o'clock and they will be debating and considering testimony on changes to mayor Caldwell's bill 69 and one of the issues is going to be whether or not to adopt the Residential Fire Safety Advisor Committee's recommendation which means a life safety evaluation. This matrix that's on the screen now that will be used to evaluate all the buildings and there are values in here you know for different things like you know if your building is is tall you know it's going to have a minus point if you have and and and what there's one issue here they there's a value for sprinklers of course nobody's got sprinklers and you know my position is well why is it a minus five because it's not required by law now and it will be required if this bill is passed but right now to give it a minus five seems to me to you know put the 150 buildings that you know are that might have to do retrofitting you know at a disadvantage you can start off with a minus five you're being punished for something that isn't required yet right so you know so I said if you want to make it a you know you know a detriment you know it should be a zero or a minus one not a minus five and and and you know and I and but the thing of it is that it turns out that if you read the report and it's I think sometimes when they submit these reports and they make it really thick like this and add all these pages it's because they don't want anybody to read and understand what's happening and if in the bottom line is is that the 150 buildings that you know have an interior quarter and are over 10 stories 10 stories are over they can't pass a life safety evaluation without doing partial retrofit exactly I mean after you get through all the report and and all the comments that's what's going to be recommended and that's what I have a problem with I you know you know my my my issue is you know I I think going through the life safety evaluation for all buildings is a good thing exactly so because it then it allows a professional to look at the you know matrix and go through the building and and score you know what what he sees in the building and and that gives you know the association and evaluation of how safe their building is you know and and they can make adjustments and to me if you can make adjustments like you can improve your elevator if you can do the elevator renovations and you know upgrade your fire alarm systems fill in the you know the vertical openings and put in smoke detectors in and this in this matrix they're requiring a smoke detector in every bedroom and in the hallways leading to the bedroom and if they're in tandem it's more points and this is this is a higher requirement that's currently required by the city ordinance which only requires one smoke detector in a condominium and so you know so you know my my feeling is is that you know if you can get a passing score by doing these you know upgrading and correcting things that are wrong with your building that you should not have to do retrofitting and if you want to do retrofitting this the new ordinance the new uh suggested revisions will allow you to do it because you have 12 years and if you need more time and let's say you know you've you've got it in your budget and you've got minutes to say that you're considering the retrofitting you go out and you know you get a proposal and you need more time the city will give you more time they will give you up to 20 years to comply I mean it doesn't say so in the statute but it you know if you you get to 12 years and you want to do retrofitting and you still need a couple of years to do it the city will give it to you they won't ding you because you haven't finished it in 12 years well the other thing I noticed too is is there's no magic number number one because even in the interview that your telephone interview you did on the news last night they were pointing out that it would cost approximately this much for this building this much for this building and those are actually just estimates yes nobody knows until you go in and because you know there's a the issue of asbestos removal and and one thing that came up on the last day of our our committee hearings is that if you want to do retrofitting you need at least the minimum there's this huge pump that you need you know to get the water from the ground up through your you know hallways and in order to do that you need at a minimum at least 10 by 10 a room that's 10 by 10 to fit this pump that needs to drive the water up and if you don't have a 10 by 10 room that means that you have to add another room to your existing condominium which raises a whole you know people live in condominium that raises a whole new you know bunch of issues like you get you need to get you know a majority a consent of your unit owners to add to the common elements and and one of the the engineers who were part of the committee said you know in downtown buildings they maxed out yeah they don't have they don't have any room so now if you're going to require them to put in a 10 by 10 room then they're going to have to come back to the city for a variance well i know you and i joked about the fact well they're going to have to kick the resident manager out of the resident manager's unit and put the pump room in there right right but again it's it's sort of like the way i've taught legislation over the years there's always unintended consequences right but you don't see those at the beginning you see that as you get into this and just like you have pointed out and and is shared with us today there are certain things that are popping up in the bill that you'd you never even thought of when this first started out right and um and and right now it's it's really important you know because you know if if there are people out there who live in these 150 buildings that may have to do retrofitting if they don't want to do retrofitting now's the time to speak up and i and if you can post that list of um city council members there there there it is okay the city council members those are your city council members and if you live in any of their districts those are their telephone numbers you pick up the phone and you call them and you won't be able to talk to the council members because they're going to be busy but you're going to be able to talk to a staff member and the miss messages i live in council member so-and-so's district i'm a constituent and i vote and i'm calling about bill 69 and i don't like retrofitting that's all you have to say and they may ask you for your name and and so you give them there and and then you can hang up but then you're your you will be registered they i i promise you they will make sure that you know the council member knows that you know they have gotten a call from a constituent who is very upset about bill 69 it's going to be heard on tuesday and uh and all of the council all of these council members listed on the screen now are members of that committee the um executive matters and legal affairs committee that will be meeting on tuesday uh january 14th at one o'clock and um and i'm hoping that when we go and i will be there at the hearing to testify for flexibility in the statute in other words i'm going to be testifying that that when the buildings get go through their life safety evaluation that they be allowed to improve their building and or upgrade their fire safety systems or do other things in order to get a passing score and that they don't have to do a retrofitting unless they choose to do it and i think it's important that the the buildings have that flexibility because only the buildings know how willing their residents are or their owners are to pay for retrofitting and and some buildings you know may want to do it and some buildings may not and so they should it should be something that is determined by the buildings and not by the government well you know the situation at the marco polo was a very sad situation but one of the things that i've noticed with a number of associations now is it made them reevaluate what is their uh plans in case of an emergency like this and actually some of them are talking about finally doing the fire drill that they've never done right um so they're it's the old saying there's always a silver lining but uh i think the work you've been doing especially um that i've seen in the last uh several weeks it's amazing how much you've done and how much has already been accomplished on modifying this bill and it's not done yet no it's not done it's not done and we've got long ways to go and like i said you know every voice counts and so you know you may think you you can't do anything but if everybody who is upset about this will pick up their phone and call their council member that's all it takes is a phone call all it takes is a phone call and so i'm i'm hoping that the message will get out and the people who are affected will realize that you know they're taxpayers they put these people into office uh to determine policy and and yes the mayor is an important elected official but he's only one elected official he's there are nine council members out there and they are waiting to hear from their constituents well as usual 30 minutes just flies by especially on a subject like this so first off i'd like to thank you again for being our guest i really appreciate you coming in because i know how hectic your schedule is especially with this kind of stuff and i'd like to thank all of our viewers for watching us here on the condo insider and be sure to tune in next thursday for more on everything you ever wanted to know about condominium living right here on the condo insider aloha