The Honolulu Fire Department cannot track mandatory high-rise building fire inspections despite more than $500,000 that's been spent since 2000 on several failed computer systems.

The systems were designed to replace the old paper record-keeping system, and were seen as a potential improvement at the time. But the database feature that kept track of fire inspections failed twice in the last seven years, officials said.

Compounding the problem is that many of the files were misplaced when the department moved from its former headquarters near Honolulu Airport to a new building on South Street.

The department is currently inputting inspection records into a new database system developed by an employee while awaiting the delivery of a system developed by the city Department of Information Technology.

"We recognize that we need to have something that allows us to query inspections, but fire inspections are but one part of what we do. Every fire station in every neighborhood has a written pre-plan, reviewed and revised monthly, for how to handle a fire in the high-rise buildings in their area. We're doing that on a regular basis," said Honolulu Fire Chief Kenneth Silva.

The monthly high-rise fire plans are stored and updated at the neighborhood fire stations.

City Councilman Charles Djou, who represents East Honolulu, said he was concerned that the city can't track which high-rises have been inspected.

State law requires the fire department to inspect the common areas such as hallways, fire escapes and garages of high-rise condominiums every two years.

"My gosh, in the city budget we give (the fire department) $80 million a year and one would think they could find a reliable computer system," Djou said. "It doesn't seem like it's rocket science and every other city agency that does have an inspection responsibility has a centralized database. Why is this so hard? It's utterly disturbing and I'm very concerned."

The department's Fire Prevention Bureau employs 15 fire inspectors responsible for inspecting high-rise buildings, businesses and schools.

In all, the department is mandated to inspect between 10,000 and 30,000 structures every two years, including the Honolulu International Airport, all O'ahu prisons, and about 800 high-rise residential condominiums.

In addition to inspections mandated by law, firefighters regularly patrol their neighborhoods and conduct spot inspections. They work with resident managers and building boards to promote fire safety and to maintain the firefighting and emergency tools in the common areas of high-rise residential buildings.

"I don't know about their internal record-keeping but our building is inspected once a year, unannounced," said Ed Chojnowski, resident manager at the Parkland Gardens condominium complex in the McCully/Mo'ili'ili area. "If an inspector didn't come around over a period of a year, I would be questioning it.

"When the inspectors come, they go through everything. They go to the common areas, the stairwells, they want to go up to the roof, they check the fire alarms, they want to check everything."

The department became aware of the lack of a comprehensive database in April, when a fire on the 25th floor of the Kapi'olani Manor condominium gutted an apartment and sent a 78-year-old woman to the hospital in critical condition.

Fire officials missed the 1999, 2003 and 2005 inspections and had checked the common areas of the building only twice since 1997, according to paper documents produced by the department.

The inspections would not have prevented the fire, which was caused by unattended candles in an apartment, however.

Fire officials bought a $189,000 records management system in 2000 that handled some tasks, but was not able to track and record inspections. Contract workers hired to input the paper records would find that one query would yield different records at different times, fire officials said.

An additional $25,000 was spent to fix the system, a cost that does not include the fire department man hours or the contract employees' time spent trying to repair the system.

In 2003, the city spent about $150,000 on 40 laptops and a database system that also did not work.

The city Department of Information Technology is in the process of creating a system to track fire inspections. The goal is to integrate all of the existing city databases and make them accessible through one system.

Gordon Bruce, DIT director, says several components of the system are already online and once complete, the fire department will have access to land maps, road work updates, and fire hydrant availability in addition to trackable fire inspections.

"This is the mistake of the past, trying to build a separate system," Bruce said. "Why not ... take advantage of some very good systems that are already out there?"

Reach Peter Boylan at pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.