 Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining me in another episode of Condo Insider. This is the weekly show that talks about condominium living and issues that affect people who live and work in condominiums. I'm here today to talk about the fire safety bill that was recently passed in May of this year and this was in reaction to the Marco Polo fire. And we've had several shows on the fire safety bill and the process by which it was introduced and passed and we thought that was going to be the end of it. But now we're finding out that implementing this ordinance is creating a whole lot of other issues that could be very, very, very expensive for associations and that's why I'm here today to talk to you about that bill. So let's get started. Bill 69 was passed after the Marco Polo fire in reaction to the Marco Polo fire and in a nutshell what it does is says that all high-rise residential buildings shall be sprinkled, shall have fire sprinklers unless they're exempt or unless they can pass a life safety evaluation. So let's break this down. So that means number one, the bill says everybody's got to have fire sprinklers except if you're exempt or you pass a life safety evaluation. You are exempt and under the statute it says 75 feet or 10 stories or you have open exterior corridors. That means you are exempt from installing fire sprinklers. You don't have to do it but those buildings that are exempt from installing fire sprinklers still have to pass a life safety evaluation. So what's a life safety evaluation? Ah, that's an inspection that's done and according to the statute it says by professional engineers and licensed architects and licensed engineers can do the inspection. And what they do is they basically look at the building and they're given, there's this thing called a matrix and it's on the fire department website and this matrix is a spreadsheet and it has 17 elements. And basically the professionals look at those 17 elements and they score the building based on their professional, their professional expertise and the building code. And they look at all of the factors and they insert a score and they determine whether or not your building passes or fails. If your building doesn't get a passing score then they may have to install fire sprinklers. But the good thing about the life safety evaluation is if you don't pass when you get the first evaluation, you then work with you, the association, work with your professional and you figure out well geez I'm only six points short of a passing score so what do I have to do? Maybe I can upgrade my fire alarm system or put smoke detectors and smoke detectors, if you have only one smoke detector in your unit under the code, I mean that's all the city code requires but under the life safety evaluation if you have a fire smoke detector in each bedroom and one in the hallway and they're in tandem then you get plus points. And so this way you work with your professional and you can figure out how you get those six points so you don't have to install fire sprinklers. And the whole purpose of this bill was in reaction to the mayor who wanted to require all high rises to install fire sprinklers. And the condominiums came back and said oh no we can't afford that. We have people who are on fixed incomes who just can't afford to install the fire sprinklers in their units because that would have to come out of their own pockets not the associations. But anyway this ordinance does give you a choice if you fix up your building so that it's safe and it passes the life safety evaluation then you don't have to do sprinklers. Now I think a lot of you who have been following this know this but let me just go through portions of the life safety evaluation so and then what I'm going to do in the second half of this program is tell you what issues there have come up now that we're kind of implementing it. Okay the bill went into effect in May. We have until the end of this month October 30 for all 300 high rise buildings to write a letter to the fire department saying that they will comply. This means even if you're exempt you have to write the letter okay to say that you will comply because even if you're exempt from installing the fire sprinklers you still have to do the life safety evaluation. The only high rise residential buildings that are not subject to this ordinance are high rise buildings that are fully protected by a fire sprinkler system. So if your building has sprinklers in every unit and in the hallways and you have a pump in the bottom of your building then you are exempt from I mean this ordinance does not apply to you. But let me quick go over some of the elements of the life safety evaluation. The focus of the evaluation is number one is how safe is the building for the firefighters who have to enter the building to fight the fire and how quick how safe is the building to get the occupants out of the building. So there's two things you have to consider getting the firefighters into the building to fight the fire and getting the people inside out. And so the things that can affect this, number one the one thing that comes to mind is the height of the building. In other words a 10 story building it's easier for firefighters to go in it's easier for the occupants to come out. A 40 story building is a lot more challenging for the firefighters to go up you know into the building to fight the fire and for occupants and residents to come out. And to add to add just another factor onto that what if you have mobility issues? What if you are a senior and you have you have to use a walker to walk and you can't come down those stairs from a 40 story building. What do you do? So you know there are you know things that if you have an open stairwell and it's behind a fire safety door if you can get your people with mobility problems out onto that to that open stairwell that might be okay but you know you have to run this by your professional you have to run it by the fire department. You know these are things that everybody you know needs to consider and you need to do your homework and find out exactly you know what issues affect your building and your residents to deal with this life safety evaluation. Another issue that is part of the evaluation and element is the construction of the building is that wood is it masonry is it drywall is it wood because naturally wood and drywall means that it's it's going to go up really fast whereas if you have masonry concrete the fire will go slowly okay so so that's a that's that's a factor that's risk factor that's entered into the spreadsheet to assist the evaluation. Another thing that the that the professionals are going to look for is doors are the doors to the units fire rated are in other words they have to be solid core doors no louvers and they have to have metal closures those automatic closures are the things at the top of the door that make the door close automatically and so that means every single unit should have these fire rated doors and in your corridor doors they the the fire rated doors are a lot thicker and they have a plate that says how long they're good for and it's usually in the door jam closest to the where the door is hinged to the wall and so you need to make sure that those are there because people are going you know that if you don't have them you're going to get minus points on the the matrix other things are that the inspectors are going to look for accessible routes how long is it going to take a person to get out of the building and how wide is in other words you take the building you divide it in half and is it a hundred feet to the exit is it 200 feet to the exit do they have to go around blind corners anyway the shorter the distance the the more points you get the longer and harder it is to get from the middle of the building to the exit then it's going to be minus points also are there lights and are there signs that say exit emergency exit and are there lights that will show people where they have to go another thing that the matrix the life safety evaluation looks for is vertical openings and you may say well what's a vertical opening and that's one of the issues that I'm going to get to later on and these are vertical openings are you know when a building is built they have to make holes in all the floors for the pipes to go through as it goes up in up the building and then they're sealed with putty and over 30 40 years the putty or the seal breaks and if you don't reseal them when there's a fire it just create the wind tunnel creates a venue on the path for the fire to go and so it will travel it will move from floor to floor so that's why you don't want vertical openings another thing that they look for is hazardous areas and smoke management and these are again our issue we're finding out as people are saying oh what is the hazardous issue area what is how do you do smoke management and I will get to them another one is smoke detectors smoke detectors right now county ordinance says you only need one in a unit but under the life safety evaluation if you have one smoke detector in each bedroom and one in the hallway and they're connected you get plus points another thing is your fire alarm system and those of you who have in your budget your elevator renovations now's the time to do it because when you renovate those elevators you have to upgrade your fire alarm system and when you upgrade your fire alarm system you have to bring it up to code and that will get you plus points in the life safety evaluation and another thing is stand pipe systems and those are the pipes that are usually in the stairwells that the fire department uses to fight the fires and you know unfortunately some buildings don't have the proper number of stand pipes that you know they that that are required to assist in fighting a fire and so there's not a whole lot you can do about it because it's very expensive to install them and and as I indicated there you know there's all these buildings that have to get the life safety evaluations in fact the city has a list there are 300 buildings on this list and you know so that means right now all 300 have until the end of this month to write to the fire department saying we're going to comply okay that's not hard but once they do that letter from November 1 they have three years to complete their life safety evaluation so that means there are 300 buildings in town that have to hire professionals to come into their buildings to do this inspection and and and see if the building can pass and get a passing score and and you know we just don't think that there's enough time because it you really only have three years to do to complete this and there's only so many professionals you know who can do the inspection and and it's not clear that this is gonna that three years is sufficient but counts our friend council member Carol Fukunaga has introduced the bill bill 72 which extends the deadlines in the fire safety ordinance and when we come back from our break we will talk about bill 72 and why council member Fukunaga had to introduce it this is think tech Hawaii raising public awareness I'm Andrea Gabriele I'm the host for young talents making way here and think tech Hawaii we talk every Tuesday at 11 a.m. about things that matters to tech matter to science to the people of Hawaii with some extraordinary guests the students of our schools who are participating in science fair so young talents making way every Tuesday at 11 a.m. only on think tech Hawaii okay welcome back we're talking about implement implementing bill 69 of the fire safety ordinance passed by recently passed by the city and county of Honolulu my name is Jane Sugimura and I'm your host today for condo and cider and when we just before the break I mentioned that there are 300 high rise buildings that need to have a life safety valuation and because we're just starting to do the implementation we've kind of discovered that there are lots of problems with the implementation of this ordinance lots of issues have been raised and so Carol Fukunaga council member Carol Fukunaga introduced the bill bill 72 which extends the deadlines in the ordinance mainly the three-year deadline for completing for the buildings to complete the life safety valuation because this is what we found out there was an association who was trying to you know be proactive and they knew they had three years to do the life safety valuation so they thought they'd get a head start they contacted a contractor who came to their building and the contractor said you know we talked to the fire department we know what we're doing and so they went and did a preliminary check and they came back to the association and they said there's no way you guys are going to pass you can't pass this life safety valuation which was not what the fire department told us when we were going through the hearings of city council and so we met with the fire department and and one of the issues that this contractor told the association was you know the mobility is something that we need to factor in and if you have one person who cannot walk down the steps that means that we have to use this risk factor a high risk factor and that's going to throw all everything else off and you guys can't pass and when we brought it to the fire department they said that's ridiculous that's not what we intended and so when we said well what what is the standard and basically the fire department said if you have people with mobility first of all you need to know people in your building if you're an association you need to know who in your building is going to have a problem getting out that's your first challenge you need to find out you need to ask people in your building to let you know if they're they have a problem getting out of the building or you have your residents tell you oh my neighbor Joe I mean he's 70 years old and he has a walker or he has a wheelchair and so yeah and he doesn't have anybody to help him so he's he's going to need somebody to help him get out the association needs to know who they are where they are and and this this has to be put into the lockbox for the first responders every condominium has one and you have to put it in there so that the fire people the first responders know where these vulnerable people or the people who mobility issues are so that they can be rescued another thing is is that you know you need to set up maybe a be proactive and set up a fire committee to to have make sure that there are people in your building who are looking out maybe floor captains to go and knock on doors to make sure that people who have mobility issues in other words they have problem walking you know that you need to make sure that somebody knows about them so that they don't get trapped in a building during an emergency but anyway mobility was a problem and the issue was definition what when do you make mobility of risk factor and the and the police and the fire department said well most times you know the person with a mobility issue they have a helper or they have somebody in the in the unit that helps them or maybe a neighbor who's going to help them and all you have to do is get him to a safe place in the building you don't have to make them come down the stairs if you can get him into a safe place maybe a landing with a that's open to exterior that's open to the air or an enclosed stairwell that has a ventilator that's a moving air in in the corridor if you can get them past the the fire doors then and let them sit and wait that would be an alternative bus but you know it should not affect the life safety evaluation another thing that came up after you know when people were contacting contractors is what kind of a professional can do the life safety evaluation the statute says licensed architects and engineers now we're finding out that not only do you have to be a licensed architect or an engineer you have to have some kind of specialized knowledge about fire safety and so you know that's not in the statute and so that needs to be clarified another issue is some of the definitions like I mentioned before hazardous area what's a hazardous area and what's a vertical opening and one of the professionals was saying well vertical openings are wherever there are pipes and every unit has pipes so that means we have to go into every unit and cut a hole in the wall and check the vertical openings and and are and and when we went when we had a meeting with the fire department we said no this can't happen there's nothing in the ordinance that says that you're going to go into the units and if you go into the units how many units do you have to go in because we don't have permission the association doesn't have permission to allow you to go into individual units and it's really difficult to arrange for somebody to get into all of the units to check inside and those of you who live in a social who sit on boards know when you do the high-risk component examination I mean you you know you can't have that examination done in a day or two days not even a week I mean you have to stretch that out over several weeks because people work people are on vacation they're sick and you can't get into their units and so and that the that type of inspection you have to get into every unit and then there was the issue of cost because you know we told the fire department you know the unit owners are going to be really upset if somebody comes in and cuts a hole in their wall and who's going to pay for that who's going to pay for cutting the hole and and putting it back and and so you know these issues have you know were never discussed never contemplated and the fire department was saying well you know maybe you don't have to go into every unit maybe you just pick a few random and so one professional says well you know for me to give my professional opinion I need to see 20% and the fire department has says well no I think 10% is sufficient but you know my building is a 300 unit building 10% is 30 units 20% is 60 units and you know that is you know really intrusive and that's something that wasn't contemplated so we're trying to get that straight now as to whether or not the people who are going to do the evaluations even have to go into the units and if they have to go into the units whether they have to cut into the walls and if they cut into the walls who's going to pay for those issues all need to be resolved before we start the life safety evaluation because all of this costs money and you know we don't want people to get into fights each association fighting with their contractors saying oh no you're not cutting into my walls or you know you're not you know we're not gonna let you go into any units and you know so we need to get that resolved before the life safety evaluation starts and and another issue came up you know for the like the smoke detectors for example the smoke detectors and the doors with automatic closures that needs to be reported to the people who do the life safety evaluation but then in talking to one of the professionals the professionals as well I won't have one of my high-priced licensed architects or engineers do that inspection I'll have one of my new hires go and look at every unit to see if the smoke detectors are there or the door closures are there and my response to that is well why why do we have to why we do we the association have to pay for somebody who's an employee of the professional to check the smoke detectors or the doors to see if they have closures when we could have our own association staff members do that inspection when let's say you do one of those high-risk component inspections and you hire the plumber to do it you send your association staff member along with the plumber to check the smoke detectors and to check the doors and make a report and they hand it to the professional and according to the fire department they say it's fine to deputize you know association staff but then the professionals say well no we really have to have our own people do it but you know if they're people do it that means the associations paying for the time of the professional to go and check for smoke detectors and whether or not you have fire rated doors on every unit and door closures on every unit and you know from the association standpoint we feel that we shouldn't have to pay for that so those you know that's another issue then he used to be resolved before we start these life safety evaluations okay so what can an association do what can you guys do and I have three things that you can do you can go to the fire department website look for the matrix become familiar with the 17 items and and and go with your site manager walk the building and find out where everything is and if you have a question now's the time to pick up the phone and call the fire department and you call battalion chief Wayne Masuda and he's on the website or you call chief Socrates Bratacos because both of them said you can call me you can have your people call me so call them and if you have a question now's the time to find out because chief Bratacos is almost is less than a year away from retirement and so these are our friends on the fire department they know about this ordinance and they were the ones who said if your people have an issue to have them call us and so call them and the third thing you can do is to tell become best friends with your council member and his council member Carol Fukunaga's bill was up for hearing yesterday past second reading and has one more reading to go and right now you know if it goes beyond December we might have a problem because Ernie Martin is term-limited so he will be leaving and we have a city council race that's really really close. Trevor Ozawa is on our side on bill 72 Tommy Waters I don't know where he is and and and this council race is Waikiki, Hawaii, Kahala and so for those of you who live in condominiums out there you should be really concerned because this is going to affect your pocket books and we're trying to resolve all of these issues before the fire ordinance is fully implemented because there's no sense in implementing the ordinance when there's all these questions that have not been answered and until we get answers we should not have to pay to have a professional come through our buildings and do a do this inspection which may result in us having to install fire sprinklers which is something that no high rise that I'm aware of wants to do so anyway thank you for listening to me today and next week on our show condo insider I hope to have Sue Savio who will be talking about the insurance implications of implementing bill 69 and you know what what does it mean for your association so please join us next week at on Thursday 3 p.m. for another episode of condo insider we will talking about insurance issues relating to bill 69 thank you for joining us this week