On Friday, the City Council's buildings committee is expected to advance one of two proposed ordinances that would require fire sprinklers in commercial high-rises built before 1975, when they became mandatory.
Monday's fire at the LaSalle Bank headquarters was the second blaze in a Chicago skyscraper in 14 months. Six people died in a fire at the Cook County Administration building last year and two reports on that fire said lives could have been saved if the building had been equipped with sprinklers and stairwell doors that automatically unlocked during emergencies.
Many of the people injured Monday were firefighters who would be better protected if buildings were required to have sprinklers, said Robert Clifford, an attorney representing relatives of victims of the county office high-rise fire in a lawsuit.
Sprinklers weren't required in either the LaSalle Bank or county office building because both were built before 1975.
The ordinance backed by Mayor Richard M. Daley's administration would exempt residential properties from the sprinkler requirement and give building owners 12 years to retrofit their properties. However, residential towers could be forced to install sprinklers if they don't meet other life-safety requirements, such as having extinguishers, alarms and unlocked stairwell doors.
The second ordinance backed by Alderman Ed Burke would require sprinklers in residential high-rises and give building owners until 2008 to comply.
The city's building code defines a high-rise as any building 80 feet or taller, or roughly eight stories and higher.
Buildings committee chairman Alderman Bernard Stone said Monday's fire "firmed up" support for sprinklers in commercial buildings, although opposition remains because of the cost of retrofitting the older buildings.
The Building Owners and Management Association, which represents more than 90 percent of commercial properties in downtown Chicago, estimates that it will cost more than $350 million dollars to retrofit the 87 commercial properties likely to be affected by the ordinance, said organization spokesman Ron Vukas. That figure could grow to more than $630 million because of asbestos removal and other related work.
Tom Lia, executive director of the Northern Illinois Fire Sprinkler Advisory Board, said the cost of retrofitting older high-rises has been overstated. Vukas estimated the cost of retrofitting buildings at $10-per-square-foot but Lia said that figure was probably closer to between $2.50 and $3.50-per-square-foot.
A National Fire Protection Association study showed that five people died in commercial high-rise fires in Chicago between 1946 and 2003.
New York passed an updated sprinkler regulation in June that requires older high-rises of 100 feet or taller to be retrofitted with sprinklers within 15 years. The new regulations also extended the sprinkler requirement to residential properties with four or more units, said Ilyse Fink, a spokeswoman with the New York buildings department.
