Detectors Get Credit for Saving 19 Lives
In Peterborough, Ontario, 19 persons are alive today who might have died in fires in 1979 if bylaw 1977-60 had not been passed—and enforced.
Peterborough bylaw 1977-60, which establishes minimum property standards for all residential occupancies, includes life-saving section 31 which requires every dwelling unit to have reliable products-of-combustions smoke detectors.
Effective Jan. 1, 1979, in residential properties of three stories or less with a building area not exceeding 6000 square feet, every dwelling unit must have a listed single-station products-of-combustion detector or detectors. The detector’s warning must be audible within bedrooms even when doors are closed. The detectors should be installed on the ceiling between the bedrooms, or sleeping area, and the remainder of the dwelling unit, such as in a hallway serving the rooms.
Operating indicator
The bylaw also requires that the detectors and alarms must have an audible or visual indication that they are in operating condition. If they are connected to the building’s electrical supply, they must be permanently mounted to a standard electrical outlet without a disconnect switch.
This law affects existing as well as new residential construction. Thus, it goes beyond the new Ontario Building Code, which has essentially the same provisions, but makes smoke detectors mandatory only for new residential occupancies.
The Peterborough bylaw is explicit in solving the absentee landlord problem. If the owner or occupant fails to comply with the law, the city has the right to install smoke detectors and recover the costs through municipal taxes on the property.
Other laws exist
Toronto, Scarborough, North York, Ottawa, Hamilton and other municipalities have passed or are considering bylaws requiring the use of early warning smoke detectors in some or all residential occupancies. Since July 1977, the Province of Alberta has required smoke detectors in every new residential occupancy.
Since June 1974, the Ontario Housing Corporation has required smoke detectors in its 83,000 rental dwelling units in 298 municipalities through Ontario.
In an OHC report on 159 fires in 1979, the first full year in which all OHC dwelling units were protected by smoke detectors, it was estimated that detectors saved at least 64 lives in 40 percent of the fires and lessened property damage in 94 fires of 59 percent.
