A couple of notations:
– Impact on rural care occupancies with respect to financial cost with sprinkler installation. Costs are significant with respect to water supply (cistern, reservoir etc.) and supply (pumps). Sprinkler industry recognized by College of Trades as of Jan 1, 2017 and costs for services anticipated to rise. Alternative solutions (e.g staffing increase, containment) may have provided an alternative.
– 2025 compliance date being given to LTCF’s, to which Government owns many versus 2019 compliance date for retirement etc. Optics were and are bad.
– Group C Retirement Home and ‘approved scenario’ fire drill. What ultimately was the purpose of requiring the drill. There is no assistance provided in some cases and people live independently as they would in a C occupancy. We’ve had supervisory staff simply demonstrate that they can perform tasks as assigned in the FSP (e.g. activate fire alarm, meet fire department).
– I share the comments of the forum group and that is that the checklist is insulting. We have recognized training in each discipline in Ontario and to put this forward would be akin to having a FF have a checklist as to how to connect to a hydrant
– 9.7 referring to 9.5 for compliance and specific to group homes. Difficult from a construction stand-point often with what was a single detached dwelling and I’m not certain how much thought was provided as to construction and compliance with same. I anticipate group homes specifically in Ontario have been inaccurately (or not even) retrofitted. The other notation with respect to group homes is that in your smaller facilities you’ll hear owner’s say that the “home” was chosen for the respective resident as it was not institutional in nature. The 9.5 requirements (containment etc.) go against this principle and I’m not certain operators (or Code Officials to an extent) were at all understanding of this.
– Not certain of local / provincial awareness of the occupational health and safety considerations going into this. For example, facilities where people have aggression issues, refusal to evacuate, become frustrated with presence of fire officials etc. I for instance did not even as much as have a introductory level session on dealing with persons with mental disabilities, had no / limited experience on a personal / professional basis and was right into actively delivering the inspection program. I have stories, thankfully none involving assault, but I can say I had a guy jump in my lap and a lady with whom you could say was really enjoying our visiting the house..
– 9.7.1.3.(2) – ‘not more than 4 persons’. This came into law with said wording. We quickly asked, well what about staff etc? The Office was quick to say that ‘not more than 4 persons’ was intended to be referring to occupants. Poor legislative wording and could have noted ‘except for staff’ or otherwise.
Those are some casual thoughts. Appreciate your efforts as always Gary.
Mat Williamson
Fire Prevention Inspector
Assistant to the Fire Marshal
City of Burlington-Fire Department
1255 Fairview Street, Burlington ON L7S 1Y3
905-637-8207 Ext. 6323
905-333-1570 (Fax)