27 September 2010
Toronto’s social housing authority is “in crisis” as it grapples with repairs and the re-housing of 1,200 residents after a blaze ripped through a high-rise.
Last week, fire crews battled a fire near the top of the 30-storey apartment block that is Canada’s largest social-housing building, and home to many people with disabilities.
The blaze completely destroyed one apartment in the 711-apartment building. But heat and smoke damage rendered the 1960s-era building a serious danger to investigation teams, according to a report in
the Globe and Mail newspaper.
Two days after the blaze was extinguished, the city’s firefighters were still spending hours battling hot spots in the high-rise.
Inspection crews haven’t even been able to set foot inside the unit where the fire originated, the report noted. The building is so structurally damaged that the floors and ceilings have to be reinforced with concrete just to allow crews safe access.
Ontario Fire Marshal investigator Mike Stewart said the building was adhering to a safety code that was half a century old.
But were it built in 2010, it would have been subject to a new Ontario provincial law requiring all buildings with more than three storeys to be equipped with sprinklers on each floor, something the high-rise does not have.
The building wasn’t retrofitted to keep up with evolving safety regulations, he said. It’s not required under Ontario law, and although there are “retrofit allowances” available for smaller buildings, this towering structure wouldn’t have qualified, Stewart said.
“We’re in a crisis,” Toronto Community Housing spokesman Barry Koen-Butt said. “How do you accommodate 1,200 people? We just are not prepared for that.”
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