Fire sprinkler retrofit is high cost, low benefit

What we have here is a solution in pursuit of a problem.

A bill in a City Council committee would require the retrofitting of all high-rise residences in Philadelphia with automated water sprinklers at great cost with virtually no safety benefit.

If residents of high-rises won’t benefit, who will?

Local 692, Sprinkler Fitters.

I’m pro-union, and if this work were necessary, I’d want it done by union workers.

But it is not necessary.

The bill was introduced by Council members Mark Squilla, veteran, and Katherine Gilmore Richardson, the youngest Black woman ever elected to Council. It is written only for residential buildings, and is a major blunder. 

How many high-rises are there in Philadelphia? (A high-rise is defined as a building at least 75 feet high, about seven stories.)

The city can’t provide an exact number, says Andre Del Valle, vice president for government affairs of the Pennsylvania Apartment Association (PAA), which opposes the bill. 

So does the Community Associations Institute, which estimates there are about 900 condominium associations of all sizes in Philadelphia.

Del Valle says the city estimates between 160 and 220 high-rise residential dwellings. The mayor’s office did not respond to my email seeking to verify that range. The economic research company Econsult Solutions, Inc., hired by PAA, identified 140 high-rise properties. These buildings  are  home to some 26,000 Philadelphians, more than half of them, 14,000, are renters.

That’s the number of people.

How many people have died in fires in the last 30 years?

“There have been no deaths in office high-rises since Meridian,” the 1991 blaze that claimed the lives of three firefighters, Philadelphia Fire Department Chief Fire Marshal Dennis Merrigan tells me.

The fire department does not record deaths by type of residential structure, but based on his 32 years in the PFD, regarding high-rise residential deaths,  Merrigan says, “If it would be five, that would be a lot” in the last 30 years. That averages out to one death every six years — if that.

“We don’t have a lot of high-rise fires,” he says.

Philadelphia high-rises constructed after the One Meridian Plaza tragedy were required to have fire sprinklers. Older buildings were ordered to be retrofitted with smoke detectors, which work remarkably well. Fire extinguishers were mandated for each floor, along with water-delivery standpipes to aid in firefighting.  Apartments in these older buildings are concrete boxes, Merrigan says, which usually restrict a fire to the unit where it began. 

[Personal disclosure: I live in a Philly high-rise.]

Part of my youth was spent in a Brooklyn project high-rise that was built in the early ‘50s. Each public-housing apartment was basically a concrete box. 

I now live in a condominium high-rise, constructed 20 years before the Meridian fire, and just like the Brooklyn project, each apartment  is a concrete box. There has not been a fire death in my building in its 50 years.

“There is no evidence to suggest that the installation of automatic sprinkler systems in existing high-rise apartment complexes is absolutely necessary,” concluded an engineering study by Thriven Design, hired by PAA. It noted that New York City and Chicago each had turned down proposals to retrofit high-rises with sprinkler systems. 

That’s true, responds the National Fire Sprinkler Association (NFSA), but New York suffered a high-rise fire in 2022 that claimed 17 lives. (The New York Times later reported none of the deaths were from fire — all resulted from smoke inhalation as a result of multiple self-closing doors not functioning properly.)   

What would it cost to retrofit all Philadelphia high-rises with sprinkler systems?

Between $20-50,000 per unit, says the PAA’s Del Valle. The stunning cost range reflects the vast differences in the size of apartments — from studio to three-bedroom — the size of the building, and materials used in construction, he said. That’s an average of $35,000.

Not surprisingly, Squilla produces remarkably lower estimates from the NFSA PenJerDel Chapter trade group. 

Executive Director David Kurasz provides stats with a range of $7-12,000. That’s an average of $9,500. 

Even accepting the lower estimate, that’s an enormous burden to put on the shoulders of high-rise dwellers, some of whom are on fixed incomes. Others, such as low-income student apartment dwellers, could be forced out of their homes permanently, adding to the city’s housing crisis. 

Temporarily relocating people might be necessary while the retrofitting construction work is being done, says Del Valle, while Kurasz says work done on several local buildings were done in a day and did not require any relocation.

Responding to my request, NFSA provided me with the names of six high-rises that had been retrofitted. Only one returned my call. Kevin Jensen, the consultant for 2400 Chestnut street, says the retrofit required residents to be relocated for “about a week.” He could not provide a cost estimate of retrofitting each apartment. 

You can reduce the issue to a cost/benefit analysis.

You might say the cost of a human life is incalculable, and every effort should be made to save every life. But that’s not true. More than 40,000 Americans died in auto crashes last year, but we don’t ban driving cars. It is an assumed risk.

So is living in a Philadelphia high-rise, but it is very low risk, so why the push for something that is so very expensive and so little needed?

That’s what I asked bill co-sponsor Squilla.

It’s not so cut and dried, he tells me. Here it gets a little complicated. 

Coming down the road is an upgrade to the International Fire Code that will be adopted by municipalities, which update their codes every 3-5 years, Squilla says.

Squilla believes this is coming, and we might as well get ahead of it, although he admits the city could exempt itself from that part of the code. He is looking for ways to subsidize the work, he tells me.

But that would shift the cost from the individual owner, like me, to the taxpayer, like you. That’s good for me, but it doesn’t seem right.

There’s no burning need for retrofitted fire sprinklers in high-rises.

Update: On 11/29/23, the city told me there are 144 high-rises in the city.