New Westminster wants senior governments to ante up some cash to help prevent horrific fires.
The city is asking the Lower Mainland Local Government Association, the Union of B.C. Municipalities and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to work with senior levels of government in an effort to have infrastructure funding made available to building owners, including care facilities, so these buildings can be retrofitted with sprinkler systems.
Coun. Chuck Puchmayr, who proposed the motion, cited the recent fire on Ash Street that destroyed an apartment building and Jan. 23 fire at a seniors' home in Quebec that left 32 people dead or missing.
“We saw the horrors of the care facility in Quebec. We’ve seen the horrors of fire in New Westminster,” he said. “Two apartment buildings since August… Let’s just see if the government will assist us in putting some infrastructure moneys toward making them safer.”
Puchmayr said Canada has a “dismal” record of providing affordable housing, and no longer has a national or provincial housing strategy.
“There is a real crisis out there,” he said. “If they can’t come to the table right now to start building needed housing, at the very least we hope they can come to the table to take the housing that we currently have and make it safer.“
Without funding assistance to help with the costs of retrofitting older buildings with sprinkler systems, Puchmayr fears there would be increased rents that would result in “rent evictions” or demolition of older buildings. He said it is “very costly” to retrofit buildings with sprinklers, noting some have plumbing issues that complicate matters.
“This quite clearly is just a matter of public safety,” said Coun. Bill Harper. “When you step back and take a look at it from 1,000 feet, it’s all about money. If the issue wasn’t about money, my belief is it would already be in the (building) code.”
Harper said “we were really lucky” there was no loss of life during the recent fire on Ash Street, which destroyed an apartment building and displaced all of the tenants who called the building home. He doesn’t think a retrofit has to be complicated, noting many schools were upgraded with sprinklers in the 1980s because they were required to.
“There’s lots of ways to do them inexpensively, or more inexpensively,” said Mayor Wayne Wright. “I welcome this particular idea coming forward.”
