Fire chiefs pushing to make sprinklers a retirement home requirement

The Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs hasn’t let up on its call to make sprinkler systems mandatory in all retirement and assisted living homes.

Older homes are exempt from the sprinkler rules.
Since 1980, 44 Ontario seniors have died in fires.
In January 2009 four senior residents died in a blaze at the Muskoka Heights retirement home in Orillia. A coroner’s inquest has been called into those deaths.
In may 2008, 84 residents at Cavendish Manor in Niagara Falls were evacuated when a resident accidentally set a chair on fire.
Recommendations on this issue will be delivered to the public safety ministry by the end of March.
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The Niagara Falls fire department has put the heat on older retirement homes in the city to retrofit their buildings with sprinklers, by forcing them to meet minimum evacuation standards.
As a result all retirement homes in Niagara Falls will have sprinkler systems by the end of this year.