FIRE SAFETY SYSTEM — FAIR WARNING?
FIRE SAFETY SYSTEM — FAIR WARNING?
A serious DEADLINE (January 1, 2024) is creating another serious expense for Condo owners in the near future: FS 718.112 (l) — Firesafety.—Any high-rise association building must ensure compliance with the Florida Fire Prevention Code. That means that these buildings must retrofit either a fire sprinkler system or an engineered life safety system as specified in the Florida Fire Prevention Code.
But make no mistake: These buildings in question got ample warning: Since 2014 bills are being discussed and enacted creating this requirement. The deadline for the necessary retrofitting changed a few times – some ill-advised board members who didn’t care about the safety of their neighbors had the law firm of Becker& Poliakoff (former Senator Ellyn Bogdanoff, now an attorney with the Becker Law Firm) lobbying against this requirement, trying to remove this requirement in the statutes or minimum trying to postpone this deadline “forever”.
In 2017 then Governor Rick Scott even vetoed a bill that would have actually allowed residents to vote to end sprinkler and other safety requirements.
Let’s make no mistake: Safety requirements, especially in high-rise buildings, are absolutely necessary – even if some high cost is involved. We have seen in Surfside that neglecting safety requirements – or even ignoring them – can have deadly consequences.
Hopefully all these high-rise condominium buildings had board members that took care of creating reserve funds for installing the required Fire Safety System. They surely had long-time warnings. We don’t want to see families losing their home because they were unable to pay the special assessment because the board members failed to collect the necessary funds over all these years.
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